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The International Politics of the Arab Spring: Popular Unrest and Foreign Policy
Edited by Robert Mason
Regional Powers in the Middle East: New Constellations after the Arab Revolts
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Tablighi Jamaat and the Quest for the London Mega Mosque: Continuity
and Change
Zacharias P. Pieri
Neslihan Cevik
MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
Copyright © Neslihan Cevik 2016
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2016 978-1-137-56527-3
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First published 2016 by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cevik, Neslihan, 1980–
Muslimism in Turkey and beyond : religion in the modern world /
Neslihan Cevik.
pages cm.—(The modern Muslim world)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Summary: “This book identifies a new Islamic form in Turkey at the turn
of the century, Muslimism. Neither fundamentalism nor liberal religion,
Muslimism engages modernity through Islamic categories and practices.
Cevik draws implications of this new form for discussions of democracy
and Islam in the region, for similar movements across religious traditions,
and for social theory on religion”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-349-56723-2
1. Islam—Turkey—21st century. 2. Islam—21st century. 3. Islamic
sociology. 4. Religion—21st century. I. Title.
BP63.T8C487 2015
297.09561⬘09051—dc23 2015019835
A catalogue record for the book is available from the British Library.
To my late Grandmother, Hayat Dagistanli
May her soul rest in peace
C on ten t s
Acknowledgments ix
Notes 219
Bibliography 245
Index 259
Ack now l ed gmen t s
This book, and years of research that preceded it, were made possible
by contributions of many people and institutions.
I met a large number of people and Islamic organizations through-
out my fieldwork. I would like to thank each and every one of them
for trusting me, for being patient with days of interviews and observa-
tions, and for giving me answers that are not generic but genuine and
straightforward, even when those questions touched upon sensitive
and uncomfortable issues. Those genuine engagements introduced
me to a living Islam that challenged existing theoretical frameworks
and needed a new accounting. The concept of Muslimism, as a new
religious type that is neither liberal nor fundamentalist, emerged in
this empirical context. It is, however, important to note that discus-
sions and conclusions in the book are my own, and neither inter-
viewees nor others who provided me feedback or comments are
responsible for them.
I was able to transfer this research into a book through a post-
doctoral fellowship funded by the Institute for Advanced Studies in
Culture, University of Virginia. At Watson Mansor, I have found,
however, more than financial support; I have found a vibrant com-
munity of intellectuals and scholars. (In fact, I think of the Watson
Manor as an incubator for social sciences.) I was most fortunate that I
was able to consult James Davison Hunter, the director of the IASC,
and benefit from his exceptional scholarship and knowledge during
the write up of the book. Our conversations on religions and the
world stimulated new ideas for me, and I am grateful for his ongoing
support.
Chuck Mathews, Slavica Jakelic, Asher Bieman, Daniel Doneson,
Murray Milner, Krishan Kumar, John Owen, Carl Bowman, Ethan
Schrum, Daniel Tureno, Alon Confino, and Jay Tolson read parts or
versions of my work on Muslimism and provided me with feedback
that improved the project. Jenny Geddes, Edward Gitre, Josh Yates,
Joe Davis, and Tony Lin engaged me in lively intellectual discussions.
My thanks are also due to IASC staff, particularly, Samantha Jordan,
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In 2008, during New York Couture Week, one of the most prestigious
fashion events in the world, “the most innovative fashion designer
award” went to Rabia Haute Couture Line, owned by Rabia Yalcin.
Rabia is a veiled Turkish woman and a mother of a young veiled girl.
In the West, Rabia is renowned as a “gown guru.” In Turkey, how-
ever, she is a fashion authority on “veil-chicness,” advising Muslim
women how to combine Islamic modesty with contemporary design
and aesthetics. This new combination, according to Rabia, is very
easy to attain and requires neither lavish expense nor the sacrifice of
Islamic modesty; one simply needs to observe some basic rules:
Don’t use bright colors; otherwise, you would look like a walking ball
of fabric . . . If you have an orange veil and orange shoes, no way you
would look aesthetic; unless you want to look like a fruit! . . . Wear the
bone under your scarf, so your hair won’t show, but loosen the scarf
to lessen the claustrophobic affect . . . Instead of square scarves, prefer
rectangular ones. Hang down your scarf underneath your jacket and
create a Grace Kelly effect . . . Be careful with your diet. Extra pounds
are the enemies of tesettur chic-ness!1
façade for Islamism. This broad policy of the party in fact was not
unchangeable but historically contingent. Since its third term in
office (2011–), the party seems to have moved to a top-down, statist
approach, and thus away from the broader new political ethos, raising
the question of whether the “Turkish model” has failed, or whether
the party is revealing its true self. Nevertheless, the party’s earlier
liberal, pro-European Union (EU), and pluralist style, and associ-
ated electoral successes, functioned to bring the emerging Muslim
engagements with modern political values and contemporary institu-
tions in Turkey to the surface. It is this period of the party and its
resonance with the new Islamic ethos that was emerging that is the
focus of this study.
In response to these puzzling developments, many scholars
as well as secularists have suggested that there is not much to cel-
ebrate. Muslims’ engaging markets, human rights, or liberal political
notions were neo-fundamentalist attempts upgrading the old formula
of “Sharia plus electricity4” from technology to modern fashion or
democracy. Or, as with the JDP, a mere front for Islamism.
Yet, what many discard as neo-fundamentalist encounters or a
façade for political Islamism is for steadfast Islamists in Turkey and
beyond a degeneration of Islam. For Niyazi, a former congressman
of Turkey’s Welfare Party closed down by the army in 1998 for pro-
moting radical Islam, for example, the JDP does not have an Islamic
identity. Describing modernity “as a furious bull attacking Islam,” for
him, the JDP not only failed to protect the society against this bull,
but it also turned Turkey away from Islam and allied it with the West.
While under the AKP, Turkey seeks to enter the EU, he contends:
“The EU will eventually demand the banning of ezan [the public call
for the five-time prayer] . . . This is the information we got from the
very inside of the EU.” Niyazi, for whom the JDP is degenerate, also
sees the emerging Islamic fashion as “the biggest measurement that
illustrates . . . the deformation among the Islamic community.” Similar
to him, a group of conservative merchants in Iraq displayed manne-
quins wearing colorful and stylish veils on the street as examples of
degenerate Muslim women who “will burn eternally for turning men
into voracious monsters.”5
Despite the fact that secularists and Islamists use opposite
approaches, they arrive at the same conclusion: Islam and modernity
are not compatible and any attempt by Muslims to go beyond this
divide is a mere façade for political Islamism, or the degeneration
of Islam. What I have found in the field, however, did not replicate
any of these accounts. Instead, my empirical research introduces
4 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
pious Muslim men and women who moved away both from Islamist
and secularist approaches and engaged modernity in a distinctive
or alternative way in markets, in everyday life, and in politics. This
book aims to examine, understand, and introduce this alternative
form.
groups were not only able to adapt to the pluralist nature of the public
sphere, but they actually contributed to it. Christian democratic par-
ties in Western Europe, for example, incorporated Catholic masses
into a pluralistic political frame and accommodated Catholicism
with democracy.27 In other places, including the US, Latin America,
Eastern and Western Europe, India, Iran, and Indonesia, religious
groups have acted as progressive civil forces, challenging authoritar-
ian states, extending borders of the public sphere, and siding with
prodemocratic forces.28 Within the international arena, as well, reli-
gious groups have managed to enact and observe universal values
(e.g., rationality and pragmatism)29 and, at times, have even contrib-
uted to global problem solving.30
The Turkish case poses more dramatic challenges to the normative
divide of the religious versus the secular. Studies on Turkish mod-
ernization and Islamic movements are now saturated with critiques
of Kemalist-secularism (laïcité/laikli k). These critiques, most vocally
coming from liberal intellectuals, point out that secularism in Turkey
is too assertive31; rather than separating state and religious affairs,
it actually oppresses religion, thus failing to observe principles of
democracy and pluralism. On the other hand, it is “too Sunni and too
Muslim”; by marginalizing religious and denominational minorities,
it fails to accommodate principles of impartiality and neutrality.32
Other studies direct our attention to the flipside of modern
Turkish history: pious groups. These works discuss how religious
actors, especially in the last decade, have been engaging global pro-
cesses and universal values and norms of human rights or democracy
more effectively than the non-religious segments.33 These engage-
ments certainly help religious actors to secure and open up space for
religion in the public sphere; however, such engagements have also
influenced the national polity at large, at times by broadening the
scope of civil rights, and at times by directly challenging the rigid and
state-oriented nature of laicism in Turkey.
Works that have paid close attention to such complex realities of
religion and secularism in contemporary Islamic and Western contexts
have undermined traditional presentations of religion and modernity
as two opposite cultural categories that are sharply separated from
each other. They showed, in contrast, that modernity and religion
interpenetrate and converge and that the boundaries thought to sepa-
rate them are, in fact, blurred. These observations have opened up
new epistemological space for the social scientific study of religion in
which we can finally step out of the religion versus modernity divide
and rethink both categories along new lines.
10 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
This book and my work on Muslimism find its place in this new
epistemological space. Yet, by defining Muslimism as a “new religious
orthodoxy,”34 the book also attempts to expand this new space and to
push the rethinking of religion and modernity to a deeper level.
Despite the current attempts to rethink religion, especially Islam,
discussions mainly criticize the false separation of religion versus
modernity at a conceptual level. When it comes to examinations of
actual religion-modernity interactions, however, most studies resort
back to a binary analysis, expecting religion to choose between “a
sterile conservation of its pre-modern characteristics and a self-effacing
assimilation to the secularized world.”35 In other words, the general
perception is that, in response to modernizing processes, religions
will either become fundamentalist orthodoxies, rejecting modernity
with an impulse to protect authenticity, or liberal formations, secular-
izing tradition to accommodate modernity.36
In studies of Islam-modernity encounters, these prescriptions
(accommodation and rejection) become slightly modified. This
is partly due to the depiction of Islam as an “exceptional” religion
(Islam is intrinsically anti-modern, secularization-resistant, and
political)37 and partly due to the domination of the religious field of
Muslim countries either by Islamist or by secularist establishments.
Accordingly, the academic observations of Islam-modernity inter-
actions have been mostly confined to a narrow spectrum polarized
between extreme examples of state-imposed secularization, aggres-
sively pushing religion into private/cultural spheres, and state-im-
posed Islamization and its theocratic designation of public/political
spheres. In the case of Turkey, for example, until the early 1990s,
we would mainly find either Kemalist (secularist) appropriations of
Islam, fully submitting Islam to modernity and to the state, or state-
centered Islamist expressions, depicting secular-modernity as anti-
Islamic and hence forbidden to Muslims.
Informed by this framework, within the divide of rejection/accom-
modation, most studies suggest that Islam gears toward a rejection of
modernity, and that this rejection is geared toward a political takeover
of the state. It follows, then, when or if Islam adapts to modernity,
it also simultaneously withdraws from the political realm, making a
social/cultural turn and becoming depoliticized.
Is there really no alternative for the pious individual, Muslim or
otherwise, than totally rejecting modernity or fully assimilating to
it? More specific to Islam, are Muslims stuck between the options
of “political Islam” and theocracy as ways to conserve tradition and
“cultural Islam,” which means abandoning the political sphere and
INTRODUCTION 11
Individual-Orientation
My empirical observations have shown that within this hybrid frame-
work, believers’ orientations toward the social order (politics, reli-
gion, social relations) and its agents (state, community, individual)
are significantly different from what we find within fundamentalist
orthodoxies and liberal-religious frames. Paralleling this, the political
and sociological implications of Muslimism are also significantly dif-
ferent from that of Islamist and liberal formations.
Differing from Islamist orthodoxies, within the compass of
Muslimism, the main aim is not a political takeover of the state to
Islamize the society nor is it the Islamization of the community to
eventually bring on an Islamic state. Thus, Muslimism is neither
state- nor community-centered. The main concern, instead, is to for-
mulate a lifestyle in which the individual believer can be incorporated
into modernity without being marginalized and while preserving an
Islam-observant living. Thus, Muslimism is individual-oriented.
Empirical evidence shows that Muslimist individual-orientation
is filtered through theological notions, specifically the definition of
true faith or true piety as iman. According to Muslimists, true faith
emanates from the individual’s iman (inner belief) and kalb (heart),
and neither iman nor kalb can be controlled or regulated by exter-
nal authority (the state or the community) and its interventions (law
enforcement or societal pressures). As such, Muslimists see faith as a
matter of individual choice, that is voluntary and from the heart, and
they cherish “faith as choice” to be more meaningful and valuable
than faith as forced by state or community. Moreover, when faith is
an individual choice, it also becomes a conscious choice rather than
blind submission to tradition.
Faith as a voluntary and conscious choice or the emphasis on iman
works as an overarching cognitive frame informing the theological
meaning and functions ascribed to the individual, community, and
the state. This theological framing, in turn, configures political and
INTRODUCTION 13
A Note on Conceptualization
The current academic lexicon presents us with the term “Islamism”
as the main conceptual tool to think about and speak of collective
Islamic action (movements) and expression. However, despite the
generous employment of the term by scholars and pundits, Islamism
is far from being a neutral (or flexible) concept that is usable as an
umbrella term. The term “Islamism” is derived from and definitive
of a particular style of movement. It refers to a religious ideology that
perceives an inherent divide between Islam and modernity, as such
seeking retrieval of an Islamic moral-political order, either by estab-
lishing an Islamic state or by creating an ideological umma.
Representing this quite particular content or form, Islamism is
an analytical category that carries with it particular ontological and
epistemological assumptions. We implicitly reproduce and agree with
these assumptions every time we employ the term to define a given
Islamic movement, whether or not this movement really fits with the
category of Islamism.
Contemporary Muslim engagements of modernity in Turkey dra-
matically challenge the assumptions that are embedded in Islamism,
because they embody a new type of orthodoxy. This orthodoxy devi-
ates from Islamism in its theological, political, and cultural orienta-
tions, as well as its temperaments and attitudes. For example, this
new orthodoxy sees Islam as an identity commitment instead of a
religious ideology, thus opening up space for religious innovation
and reform. It emphasizes inner ethics, rights, and individual choice
over external authority, and it acknowledges pluralism and promotes
cultural tolerance, expanding interaction with the secular and non-
Muslim “other.” Furthermore, in its orientation to the state, this new
16 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
political parties. The JDP manifested this new Islamic political ethos.
An argument that I pursue is that many Muslimists became active
in the party and influenced it, while other factions, especially those
from the old Movement, simply used a sympathetic language that
appealed to Muslimists. The new style of Islamic politics the JDP
presented in its early terms, in other words, was located in an emerg-
ing Muslim status group and their comprehensive engagements of
modernity. Religious change in Turkey, as such, is not reducible to
the mere effect of a political party, even as it is important to under-
stand how a new Islamic orthodoxy articulated by a broad range of
actors interacts with party politics. This, importantly, also allows us
to recognize the highly conditional nature of the JDP’s discourse and
identity, and make sense of the current shifts in the party without
falling back into the essentialist divide of Islam versus modernity.
back and forth between separate but interconnected everyday life and
political spaces.
be a viable solution for the region. With the more recent moving away
of factions of the JDP’s leadership from its early commitments to a
liberal democracy, however, debates have taken a new turn, announc-
ing the fall of “Turkish model.”
Either way, in the last decade or so, the global audience has been
treating Turkey as the grand test for Islam’s compatibility with, and
future in modern politics. But viewing Islamic interactions with
democratic values and institutions with an excessive focus on politics,
these debates have also limited the terms of this test to the politi-
cal arena and actors. By showing that the so-called Turkish style of
Muslim democracy is deeply entrenched in comprehensive Muslim
engagements of modernity and broader theological and cultural
changes, rather than being a mere product political mechanisms and
actors, the book offers a crucial starting point for any serious discus-
sion on the changing relationships between Muslims and modernity
in Turkey and what these changes imply for the region in terms of
policy-making and for our thinking about Islam in a late modern
context more generally. The approach developed here suggests that
rather than asking whether the Turkish model can be retrieved and
can be used to channel political development in the region per se, we
need to recognize the rise of a shared quest in the region to break free
from Islamist and secularist prescriptions and divides, and articulate a
new style of society and religion where one can engage contemporary
life and institutions (from extended political rights to economic and
social upward mobility to leisure) while remaining within the sym-
bolic boundaries of a faith.
Relative to Turkey, the future of Muslimism will depend on various
factors. In the years following my fieldwork, Muslimism and the sites
of hybridity have become more institutionalized in everyday life. But
at the political level, Muslimist elements have been less manifested
in government policies. Although the JDP government did initially
bring Muslimist elements to the surface and incorporated them into
reforms and political change, since the beginning of its third term in
the office (2011), it seems to have been rolling back on these reforms.
If the party continues in this direction, Muslimism could lose its
political outlet and general viability, and any number of outcomes
might result, which I take up in the last chapter.
In my concluding remarks, I will moreover suggest looking glob-
ally, Muslimism is not unique in its approach at articulating ratio-
nalistic institutions and religious tradition. There are indications of
religious movements and forms, including non-Islamic traditions
that, similar to Muslimism, are neither liberal syncretism in which
INTRODUCTION 27
What, then, has enabled the rise of a group of pious men and
women who stake a claim not only on Islamic values but also on
modern values, seeing Islam as commensurate with aspects of mod-
ern life? How can we explain, for example, the rise of Islamic human
rights organizations that refer both to Western and Islamic sources to
define human rights, or of pious actors who find not the Islamized
state but a liberal state to be indispensable for establishment of a truly
pious life?
Are these developments results of top-down state secularization
that effectively moderated Islamic forces? Has an ever-expanding
global modernity loosened Islam’s symbolic boundaries, creating a
new-fangled liberal or cultural Islam? Alternatively, is “moderation”
simply a political expediency, perhaps a front for a neo-fundemantalist
wave seeking a bottom-up Islamization?
An adequate interpretation for the rise of Muslimist orthodoxy
requires that we abandon such binary divisions of cultural versus
political, and liberal versus fundamentalist religion, and instead pay
attention to the interplay between political and cultural, and the
changing boundaries between religion and secular modernity. I start
this inquiry by situating both Islamist and Muslimist mobilizations
into their particular historical context.
This comparative historical reading demonstrates that the con-
ditions underlying the upsurge of Islamism in modern Turkey and
those that generated Muslimism are largely different from each other.
Indeed, Islamist and Muslimist forms have developed, thrived, and
gained meaning in distinct “cultural orders.” By “cultural order” I
mean what scholars have called cultural schema of things, 2 an insti-
tutionalized moral order of things,3 and institutional structures,4
each pointing to the symbiotic relationship among culture, institu-
tionalized practices, political and material arrangements, and human
agency.5 More specifically, a cultural order presents “a set of institu-
tionalized identities and binding rules that infuse people and their
actions with meaning and value”6; these rules . . . determine the range
of possible actions and ideologies, thus they constitute actors and
actions.7
In modern Turkish history, we find two distinct cultural orders
that surrounded religious actors with radically different arrangements
of material and nonmaterial aspects of life: bureaucratic republicanism
(1918–1980) and liberal republicanism (1980–present). A product of
the Kemalist revolution that replaced the Ottoman structure with a
modern nation-state, the bureaucratic order was characterized by a
statist polity and secularist policies that sought a total exclusion of
FORBIDDEN MODERN TO GUILTLESS MODERNITY 31
Islam from public and political spheres. In the 1980s, however, neo-
liberal economic adjustments forced the state out of economy and,
subsequently, out of social life. The retreat of statism—reinforced by
international institutions and developments—expanded rights and
liberties, including religious freedoms; generated an autonomous civil
society; and democratized the national polity; thus, it progressively
paved the way for a new liberal order.
The central argument I advance here is that Islamist impulses have
developed within the bureaucratic order vis-à-vis an authoritarian
state and its secularist style of modernity/modernization. Muslimism,
in contrast, emerged in the post-1980s along and in tune with lib-
eralization of the state and economy. This emergence opened up
new economic and political opportunity spaces for Islamic mobiliza-
tion, and the subsequent rise of an urbanizing and upwardly mobile
Muslim status group, who, disenchanted with puritan, traditional,
anti-modern, and anti-state religious establishments, articulated a
hybrid, reformist, and individual-oriented orthodoxy, Muslimism.
Partisanship (–)
The 1971 intervention aimed at halting political violence and
strengthening the state against civic mobilization of the economic
periphery, Islam, and the left. By 1973, the military completed its task
and restored the bureaucratic order. This, however, was short lived.
The 1970s represented an intensification of previous developments.
Growing economic crises (most notably, high inflation, increasing
unemployment, and rural-to-urban migration caused by import sub-
stitution in industry and the shortage of consumer durables in con-
junction with the 1973 world oil crisis) sharpened ethnic (Kurd vs.
Turk), sectarian (Alevita vs. Sunni), and ideological (right vs. left)
polarization, and further politicized the Islamic opposition. Unstable
political collation governments unable to cooperate could not address
structural problems of the country. At the end of the 1970s, partisan-
ship became part of social structure; the populace, public agencies,
and the civic service were acutely polarized.50 Political violence took
42 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
over the society. Confronted with severe economic and political cri-
ses, in 1980 the military intervened for the third time.
This time around, however, the generals sought a long-term
solution for political stabilization. The answer was found in major
economic adjustment that would replace the etatist economy with
an export-oriented free-market model, a solution that was also
fiercely pushed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
and the World Bank in the wake of Turkey’s increasing geopoliti-
cal importance in the post-Cold War environment. With hopes for
economic recovery combined with Western pressure, the generals
carried out a coup and introduced neo-liberalizing adjustments (i.e.,
24th January measures) proposed by the IMF and drafted by Turgut
Özal, a previous World Bank employee and the head of the State
Planning Organization at the time.
tendencies, but in each such case, the conditions for Muslimism were
partial or weak; they were either declined through lack of a popular
support or were outright suppressed by military interventions.
and relevance, unable to render meaning for or resonate with the new
Islamic actors generated by the liberal cultural order.
Liberalization further weakened Islamist institutions and impulses
by ending the state’s monopoly on defining the theory and practice of
modernity. Liberalization actually generated a more advanced under-
standing of modernity that challenged the secularist discourse and its
simplistic divides. Such divides as “veiled/religious/backward” ver-
sus “unveiled/secular/modern” continued to be a part of the Turkish
modernity narrative; nevertheless, these divides were weakened
because of having to compete against the rising values of the liberal
order. Human rights, democracy, pluralism, individual autonomy,
associational life, entrepreneurship, globalization, and innovation
became the new terms used to speak of and think about modern life,
conduct, and identity. These new values opened alternative avenues
for Muslims to engage in modern life, and to rethink and reevaluate
its various aspects independent of statist categories. With the chang-
ing meaning of modernity, which no longer required an automatic
dismissal of religious identity or sentiments, the “forbidden modern”
of Islamism also started to lose cultural relevance and appeal.
On the whole, by undermining, on one hand, the hegemony of
the state on defining modernity, and on the other, the hegemony of
Islamist formations on defining Islam, liberalizing reforms opened a
new space, or created a vacuum, for articulation of diverse and alter-
native religious expressions. Muslimism emerged in this vacuum.
Throughout the 1980s . . . people could not even take one step
independent of the cemaat (s); people would follow whatever the
head of the cemaat says . . . by 1990s this changed and people became
more individualized in terms of being able to act and decide indepen-
dently. This is how I view the CWPA platform. Here women are not
tied to anywhere. This is why I decided to become a member. The
CWPA women are women who were able to realize this individuali-
zation. . . . They have different and creative ideas and they can express
these differences. Before, you could not even think about that.
by the Islamist NVM under the Welfare Party. As the post-1980 coup
military rule came to end, the movement and its long-term leader,
Erbakan, returned to politics, this time opening up the Welfare Party
(1983–1997).
Continuing the general discourse and style of the NVM, the
Welfare Party maintained an Islamism versus secularism stance. It
depicted the West and Western secularism as “microbes” that caused
corruption, moral decay, inequality, interest, and high prices. The
party advocated moral improvement by eliminating Western influ-
ences. It depicted the EU as a Christian club, disfavored membership
in the group, and promoted intra-Umma alliances.77 The party was
state oriented, and it assigned religious leaders and Islamic moral-
ity an explicit place in political and economic spheres and in moral
order. It proposed the “Just Order” program, which promoted a com-
bination of Ottoman and Islamic identities. The appeal of the Just
Order came from two things: emphasizing a balance between growth
and economic equality, and using Islam as a guarantee for political
decency and economic development.
The mid-1990s witnessed a strong, though short lived, wave of
Islamist political resurgence. The Welfare Party gained mayorship in
various cities in 1994, became the leading party in 1995, and the
senior partner of a coalition government with the center-right True
Path Party in 1996, carrying Erbakan to prime ministry. The main
electoral support for the party came from lower income groups of
villages, and migrants of urban centers who could not benefit from
redistribution of wealth throughout the transition years.
The party, however, also received some support from Muslimist
entrepreneurs and civil society, contributing to its political victory.
How was it that the Islamist Welfare Party got support from early
Muslimists, who actually challenged reactionary and state-centered
Islamic expressions?
The Welfare Party was the only party at the time explicitly open
to Islamic sensitivities, which made it relatively attractive for early
Muslimists. The alliance between Muslimist grassroots and the NVM,
however, was marked by tension. The Welfare Party and its Islamist
discourse could not fulfill Muslimist expectations in the long term.
Eventually, Muslimists broke off from the movement, shifting their
support to a newly founded political party, the JDP (2001), which, at
the time, used a political language more receptive to and consistent
with Muslimist sentiments and demands.
The formation of this party, nonetheless, had to wait for another
backlash, a Kemalist upsurge, which closed down the Welfare
56 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
Party and reasserted statism. It was in fact this battle between two
extremes—Islamists and secularists—that catalyzed Muslimists to
break free from Islamist political establishments and carry their dis-
tinct political views and demands into the political sphere under a
new political party.
closure more difficult and reduced the weight of the military and the
high judiciary on the parliamentary and democratic processes.88
The party’s foreign policy strategies and initiatives were in line
with political sensibilities associated with Muslimism. Differing from
Islamist depictions of Western institutions as “microbes” and from
Kemalist resistance to globalization, the JDP took major steps toward
Turkey’s membership in the EU while working to increase Turkey’s
engagements in the Middle East. Changes in Turkish foreign pol-
icy, moreover, included an expansion in scope with new openings to
sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia,89 showing that the government
sought to strike not only regionally but globally. In fact, the govern-
ment claimed a calling to lead in a new world order and to provide a
model for the future; it especially staked a claim to have a special role
in bridging civilizational divides in the twenty-first century.90
By expanding rights, using a language of liberalism, pursuing
a conciliatory foreign policy, and securing space for Islam in pub-
lic and political spheres, the party presented a political ethos that
articulated with a Muslimist global vision. This does not make the
party essentially Muslimist, but in historically conditioned ways, it
was Muslimism informed by leaders and voters who shared Muslimist
sensibilities. Understanding the influence of Muslimism and the
nature of this articulation could usefully guide us in speculating how
in its third term the party’s seeming shift to top-down policies, ones
specifically at odds with a Muslimist ethos, will affect its relationship
to the diverse Muslimist strata identified here and more broadly affect
the place of Islam in public life.
Conclusion
In the present chapter, I have provided evidence that modern Turkish
Islamic movements have taken different forms and content under
different institutional (material and non-material) arrangements.
Throughout the bureaucratic republican order, Islamic movements
took on an Islamist form. The transition to neo-liberalization and
associated political changes undermined statism and entrenched
Islamism thereby opening up new spaces for Muslims’ economic and
public mobilization, generating in fact a new Muslim status group.
This increasingly educated, urban, and upwardly mobile group artic-
ulated their Islamic identity with modern contemporary institutions,
creating sites of hybridity and the Muslimist orthodoxy. These sites
are found throughout society, and I have focused on business, civic,
and political sites.
FORBIDDEN MODERN TO GUILTLESS MODERNITY 61
political (the three ds) are inseparable.3 That is, Islam is not only
a religion but also a way of life (from economic production to the
nature of family) and a way of governance. One line of scholarship
finds the interweaving of the three ds to be intrinsic to Islam, depict-
ing Islam, thereby, as a political and secularization-resistant religion
in its very nature. Others have effectively argued that this holistic-
ity is putative and historically contingent,4 pointing, moreover, to
streams of Muslim scholarship and thought for which Islam has no
claim over politics and “modern politics and economics are more of
a civil domain for the ordinary citizens to ponder and to improvise
upon.”5
Informed by these broad discussions, present scholarship uses
the three ds to examine the content of contemporary Islamic move-
ments/expressions. Common applications of this framework,
however, typically concentrate on how movements construct the
relationship among the triad of religion, everyday life, and politics,
while dealing rather thinly with how religious groups orient to—in
other words, define, organize, and render meaning to—each of
these different realms. Such applications tend to result in a binary
taxonomy of Islamic movements, ranging from fundamentalist/
political-Islamist forms (the sacred is active across social spheres) to
liberal-like theologies/cultural Islam (the sacred is separated from
the arrangements of the mundane and the political), which does not
capture the complexities of the Muslimist form. For example, similar
to Islamists, in Muslimism, the world/reality surrounding the indi-
vidual is also God-given and transcendental. Muslimists too reject
radical autonomy from the sacred (din), and religious precepts influ-
ence and inform social spheres (the sacred actively shapes ways of
life and core political metaphors). In other words, both in Islamism
and Muslimism, religious notions transfer into politics, yet the out-
comes are remarkably different: Muslimist theological emphasis on
the individual politically tends toward the desacralization of the state
and, across social spheres, undermines traditional Muslim codes and
establishments while heightening individual/civil agency and a con-
scious religious identity.
My use of the “Islamic ds,” hence, differs from common applica-
tions. I look at how religious groups understand, frame, and construct
each social realm—religion, everyday life, and politics—by examining
people’s “reality orientations”: ontology, agency, and action. These
orientations encompass important attitudes and practices. Ontology
is a meta-view or a set of general assumptions and interpretations
that constitute and define reality; it specifies how people view the
nature of the sacred, the mundane, and the political and renders that
MUSLIMISM VERSUS ISLAMISM 65
nature with meaning and value. This usage follows cultural analyses
that view culture as constituting reality6 and attempts to capture the
understanding that culture is an order of things within which identi-
ties are embedded and constituted and from which flow local mean-
ings (including self-understanding) and meaningful action.
Agency refers to actors who are assigned significance and agency
to attain and maintain a given meta-view. Different meta-views tend
to stipulate different agents; authoritarian versus democratic polities,
for example, will impose agency on different actors and to varying
degrees (ranging among the individual, organizations, and the state),
whether the agency pertains to economic development or social poli-
cies. Finally, action refers to a set of actions favored/prescribed for the
establishment and maintenance of a given meta-view; we would expect
different meta-views to mandate different types of action (e.g., statist
policies versus civil participation). A conceptualization of Muslimism
based on people’s reality orientations across religious, political, and
everyday-life spheres results in a cognitive-schema that maps out key
Muslimist temperaments.
into the analysis, however, we can also examine the role played by
religious women in shaping and disseminating Muslimism. The task
here is to trace how female actors constitute themselves as subjects
of hybridity within a Muslimist frame and thus become agents of
identity change and religious innovation as they rework the sacred
into everyday life.
human rights “as the ethical gauge of any and every political action”18
emerged, opening up Turkish human rights politics to new actors as
well as new conceptual terrains from freedom of religion to consumer
rights.19
Emerging from this context, MAZLUM-DER initially put for-
ward a conventional Islamist discourse, viewing Western notions
of human rights and Islam to be incompatible and limiting itself to
violations regarding Islamic people. It accused the Western approach
of being imperfect, faulty, and unjust, depicting it to be rooted in
laws of atheism and imperialist ambitions. Islamic human rights, in
contrast, were blessed to be God-given, perfect, and universal. With
this divide, MAZLUM-DER based its approach to human rights
on Islamic theological sources in full rejection and exclusion of the
United Nations Human Rights Convention.20 However, this Islamist
stance and discourse were quite short-lived. Around the mid-1990s,
and under a new chair, MAZLUM-DER abandoned the Islamist dis-
course and shifted toward a conciliatory and hybrid politics, causing
former leadership to press claims against the current administration
for losing Islamic identity and sensitivities.21
Along with this shift came a broadening of activities. From reli-
gious issues, it expanded its interests to include, for instance, refu-
gee rights, minority rights, health care and patient rights, consumer
rights, children’s rights, death cases, and women’s rights. It also
reframed its stance on particular issues, for example, starting to
rethink the Kurdish issue within a discourse of multiculturalism and
liberalism, rather than approaching it with an emphasis on the unity
of umma and a concern to prevent polarization within the Islamic
camp. “Today, MAZLUM-DER (sic) aligns itself unequivocally with
a universal vision of human rights, fully compatible with international
standards”22 and seeks cooperation with Western agencies for a more
efficient human rights platform. This is visible in its joint activities
with Western organizations, such as the Human Rights Watch, and
its foundation of a separate commission designed to monitor develop-
ments in the international community, such as the UN, the EU, the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Moreover, my inter-
views with the leaders of MAZLUM-DER revealed they now claim
that they refer both to the UN Human Rights Convention and the
Medina certificate in defining and approaching human rights, that
they promote human rights as a horizontal line (which can cut across
clichéd camps of secular versus religious and Islam versus the West),
and that they stimulate those camps to work together.
MUSLIMISM VERSUS ISLAMISM 73
the law requires so. Because this way you would be two-faced and
hypocritical.”
Third, exclusionary politics are not solely confined to social
interactions with the outside, whether non-Islamist factions or the
society at large. They also pertain to the repudiation of lifestyles,
choices, and habits of the other. This finds its legitimacy, in the
depiction of the non-Islamic other, to be illegitimate. The serious
implications of this radical position unfold as Islamists talk about
practices that are considered haram (impermissible), such as the sell-
ing and drinking of alcohol. These discussions show that Islamists,
in fact, do not consider such actions as “issues of freedom”; such
actions are not subject to individual choice nor are they entitled
to cultural (or political) tolerance. This radical approach then pre-
vents Islamism from developing a conciliatory politics, reproducing
instead the established cultural divides between Islamic and secular
segments in Turkey. As we will see, relative to politics, this cultural
conservatism that marks Islamists’ perception and position toward
the other translates into an authoritarian state model and prohibi-
tory politics.
It is noteworthy that Islamists also attempt to further justify their
rigid position toward the other by pressing claims against the West
for having malevolent intentions against Islam and Turkey, direct-
ing such claims especially toward the EU and the harmonization
packages proposed by the union for Turkey’s possible membership.
Reflecting on new laws that halted compulsory religious education
in state schools, for example, Niyazi contends: “Absolutely this can-
not be accepted . . . I mean the EU has some pressures like . . . the folk
needs the freedom to pick their own religion, and the folk should
live their religion civilly and individually. This is unacceptable . . . the
information we have acquired from within the EU tells us that after
a while they will even demand for banning of ezan (the public call
for prayer).”
Islamist Orientations to
Everyday Life (dunya)
Ontology: Purism
Islamist engagements with secular modern life, its institutions, and
its values are characterized by purist discourse and attitudes. For
Islamism, modernity and Islam are two opposite poles and, based on
this divide, every aspect of life, from social and personal interactions
80 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
I have never been to an Islamic fashion show and I would never . . . This
[Islamic fashion shows] is the biggest measurement that shows us the
degeneration and deformation among the Islamic community . . . if we
have to pinpoint a breakdown point, a point of change in Turkey,
what caused tesettur [Islamic dress code] to be degenerated, it is teset-
tur fashion shows.
The polarization of Islam and modernity and the West versus Islamic
umma also emerges in Islamist critiques against the Justice and
Development Party government. Given its Islamic roots and affini-
ties, the party’s aggressive attempts to further deepen Turkey’s rela-
tions with the West, especially with the EU, and its giving up on the
Islamist project are perceived to be strange, disappointing, and, in
more extreme cases, enraging. An Islamist businessmen, again from
Bayramoglu’s study, says:
Now the party is talking about something strange. It says there will
be no Islamic government. Like a broken bone, the pain will come
out later. The party is disturbing electoral segments that brought it
to power.31
Agency: Communitarianism
Related to social order and organization of social relations, Islamists
tend toward communitarianism; they perceive religious identity as
a collective identity and define Islam as a society-religion, hence
empowering the community (cemaat) over the individual. Niyazi
highlights the communitarian aspect of Islamism this way: “Islam
is not something that can be lived by the individual himself. You
don’t live Islam solo; we live Islam together with our community and
friends.” Similarly for Ekrem, whereas individualism is peculiar to
the West, community (cemaat) is central to the Islamic social/moral
order: “The concept of individualism is . . . negative. I think that it is
something propagated by modernity. In Islam, we keep the concept
of cemaat in the front. Not that we ignore the individual, but we
think individualism is rather negative.”
82 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
For Islamists, then, new practices such as the Caprice Hotel, that
attempt to combine Islam and modernity, which are in essence incom-
patible, create a “partite identity and life,” where some Islamic rules
in certain aspects of life are protected but others are let go. This frag-
mentation in identity and life then triggers a chain reaction, ending
with a losening of morality and a weakening of creed.
The new veiling styles are rejected through a similar discourse.
Islamists contend that when Muslim women fashion the veil, even if
they continue to wear it, they move away from the actual function
and meaning of veiling. This again creates a partite identity, a cor-
ruption in moral action and a loosening of faith. The holistic view
then works against this fragmentation in Muslims’ everyday life and
identity, conserving correct moral action and recovering what is being
deformed.
We, however, also find that tradition emerges not only as a part of
moral but also political discourse. Practices that articulate Islam with
aspects of modern life, in the form of vacations or Islamic fashion, are
detested for enticing Muslims into temporary appetites and pleasures
of modernity and diverting them from the real issue of Islam: the
oppression of the umma and political resistance against the oppres-
sors of Islam and Muslims. One author asks whether Chechnya,
which was under invasion around the same time Islamic vacations
became popular among Turkish Muslims, is visible from the windows
of the Caprice Hotel.33 This sarcastic yet rather strong protest reveals
how traditionalist impulses intertwine with reactions against cultural
change and innovation, increasing class divisions, weakening the idea
of umma, and contributing to the abandonment of political goals
among Muslims in contemporary Turkey.
In addition and in a parallel vein, Islamists, although rather
comfortable adopting Western technology, outright reject
MUSLIMISM VERSUS ISLAMISM 85
cultural engagements with the West and claim that they enter-
tain this rejection in everyday life by protesting certain Western
products that symbolize Western culture, such as Coca-Cola and
McDonalds.
use a quote and quote when we speak of ‘human’; this shows us that
these attempts are not genuine. We already saw that through Iraq . . . I
mean, they buried people in Bagdad, live broadcast. They buried
them . . . I believe that the hope for the whole world is in Islam’s under-
standing of justice and rights.
Agency: State-Centeredness
This particular state model suggests that Islamists see the state as
the main agent for realigning the profane along with the sacred or
establishing a religiously defined society and religious individuals.
The political agency of the state is in fact deeply rooted in Islamist
theological precepts. Islamism views the state as a central and intrin-
sic part of a truly Muslim life.
For one, Islamism distinguishes among Islamic teachings that
are related to individual worshipping (e.g., praying or fasting) and
those that pertain to regulation of social order (e.g., judicial and eco-
nomic systems, and the relationship between the ruler and the ruled).
Teachings that fall into the latter category, Islamism asserts, make up
the bulk of Islam (compared with aspects related to individual ritu-
als), and their (proper) practice requires an Islamic state to be present.
Niyazi, for instance, expresses this hierarchical separation by defining
Islam as a state and society-religion.
Second, and integral to this definition, is the idea that a fully
Islamized social order with an Islamic state preserves pristine religion
by extrapolating correct moral action and norms from theological
resources, hence also eradicating subjective interpretations. Such sub-
jective interpretations tend to emerge in secular systems that priva-
tize religion and withdraw the state from religious functions. Niyazi
expresses this concern as follows:
and distributed by the state. The state is absolutely needed for punish-
ments in the criminal law; the decisions must be made by the state.
Imperatives about family relations or inheritance and estate . . . So there
are many and more imperatives that are related with muamalat, and
they constitute the majority of Islamic rules.
I accepted the offer, but informed this person that he also had to pur-
chase insurance. He said, ‘Insurance is haram, I won’t buy insurance,
but give me the car’ . . . I sold him the car. Three weeks later, I received
another call from the same person. He told me he got in a bad acci-
dent; the car was in bad shape. He said, ‘Can you give me insurance
now?’ I said, ‘No! I can’t, insurance is haram!’
Ersin pauses and smiles. Ersin also owns a medical company and
imports medical equipment, both from India and the United States.
He explains:
The hoja will say according to our mezhep [denomination], you can-
not buy goods before [or without] seeing them in real life. But today
it is not like that, and you certainly must adapt to that in this global
economy and world.
context. This, consequently, opens doors for identity change and reli-
gious reform.
We find concrete expressions of this view of Islam centered on
identity, and how this view differs from ideological orientations, as
we listen to Muslimist discussions about what the veil symbolizes and
means.
For both Muslimism and Islamism, the veil is sacred; it is a symbol
of Islam. However, for Islamism, the veil is also a political symbol
because veiling signifies an ideological position. It bears repeating
that for Zehra, her veil (or veiling) means that she defines “a state
system, a family system, and an education system in accord with
Islam.” “In that sense,” she continues, “yes, the veil is a political
symbol because it is asserts a certain life.”
Perceptibly departing from this religio-political framing of the veil,
Muslimists define and understand veiling as a personal choice to com-
mit to God. For Gulin (of the Capital Women’s Platform Association
[CWPA]), for instance, veiling is an “endeavor to redeem someone’s
here and hereafter; it is not a uniform!”
In fact, Muslimists are not content with the idea that the veil
is a political symbol. On the contrary, consistent among the four
organizations (MUSIAD, MAZLUM-DER, the Justice and
Development Party [JDP], and the CWPA), Muslimists blame
the state’s secularist policies (the long-term ban on the veil) for
transforming the veil into a political symbol, while equally despis-
ing established Islamic political actors (i.e., the National Vision
Movement parties) for using the veil as a political bait and symbol.
Serdar (of the JDP) says:
I don’t discriminate between women who are veiled and who are not.
I think veiling is a personal choice. However, I find the mentality
[referring to National Vision Movement parties], which puts the veil
to the front and uses the veil as if it is a political symbol to defeat its
political rivals very erroneous. The veil is not a political symbol; it can-
not be abstracted from people’s beliefs and reduced to a simple politi-
cal act as such: wear this or don’t wear that.
On the other hand, Muslimists also address more practical and insti-
tutional issues. In the current economic system, they argue, it is not
only activities aimed at greater wealth (e.g., business loans), but also
simple necessities of everyday life (e.g., opening a bank account or a
salary deposited in a bank) that automatically involve one in usury.
Given the particular nature of the current economic system, in which
usury is almost unavoidable, strict adherence to early definitions,
Muslimists argue, hampers Muslims as persons and as a collective
group, causing them serious and tangible losses.
Lale (of CWPA) expresses these practical concerns as follows: “I
use bank credits, so in that sense I receive bank usury. In addition,
I work for the state; my salary already includes interest, and I know
that. I mean, if we live in this society, you can’t say, ‘No, I am not
going to use the banks!’ This would be naive!” She continues to ask:
“I mean, in this age, are you going to rent a house rather than taking
100 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
bank credit to buy a house? Who is losing and who is winning? So,
usury is a necessity in this time.”
As we go deeper into the Muslimist narrative on usury, we cap-
ture, then, demands for change. Reinterpretations are reflexes of
the Muslimist pursuit of becoming further integrated into modern
life, benefiting from it, and moving toward the center from the eco-
nomic and cultural periphery of the society. This new status group is
dynamic; it assertively seeks to take part and acquire a higher stake in
modern institutions and everyday life.
Yucel, another congressman, expresses this pursuit quite
strikingly:
If you are going to engage in commerce, then you have to also work
with the banks. In addition, the state provides long-term stimulus
with low interests. However, due to our beliefs, we, as MUSIAD or
religious people, feel discomfort. Here religious leaders and religious
102 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
institutions should pave the way for new solutions. Because if you plan
to prosper and if you want to increase your volume of trade or find
your place in the international market, then you should be able to
benefit from such state incentives and rights for competition. Look
at TUSIAD [a prominent secular businessmen association and civil
actor]: they always rely on state incentives. But MUSIAD only relies
on its own capital and thus we are still characterized by small-to-me-
dium size entrepreneurship. Again, religious leaders should carefully
evaluate this subject and produce a solution . . . And due to your com-
mitments, you have to take a step back, you cannot accede to state
incentives, and you are incapable of upsizing your business. This is an
obstacle.
When the first revelation came, it was not about the veil or cover-
ing. The first revelation was about the principle of tevhid [oneness
of God]. In other words, renouncing polytheism and acknowledg-
ing monotheism . . . so, it was not like, ‘Here, cover yourself and pray.’
Before any of that, it is the principle of tevhid. Believe in Allah, stop
worshipping effigies, be just and be good, and such other moral and
belief-related statements came before anything else. The covering
and so came afterwards. Thus, I think a good Muslim is one with
good morals. One of my non-veiled friends was much more virtuous
than any of my veiled friends. I have many non-veiled friends that I
respect.
MUSLIMIST RELIGIOUS TEMPERAMENTS 107
Given the secrecy about one’s heart—of which only Allah has full
knowledge—the legitimacy of external sources (whether it be the
community or the state) in deciding who is a true believer and who
is not becomes rather weakened. In other words, the conception of
Allah as the only, inimitable, and indisputable authority “holding the
scale” undermines the community’s coercive power and prescriptions
while it heightens individual autonomy vis-à-vis the community with
respect to religious actions and decisions. As such, the direct and
mystical-like relationship between the self and Allah again impels and
softens Muslimists toward self-expression and heterogeneity, expand-
ing once more the boundaries of the Muslimist community.
Similarly, Pinar says: “Plus, there is the age factor. Why would
a sixty-year-old grandma and a fifteen-year-old girl wear the same
things, tie their scarves similarly, or use same colors? I think it should
be diversified. The diversification based on age or taste is natural
anyway.”
Thus, Muslimists do not see the new veiling styles as a threat;
instead, it is a “natural outcome and reflection of individual dif-
ference,” from marital status to physical features to personal pref-
erences. This demonstrates that individual difference, the self,
and human subjectivity find a new interest and legitimacy among
Muslimists.
Lale pinpoints this positive attitude toward human subjectivity
by criticizing traditional religious circles for trying to “format the
veil.” Academics may easily depict the common talk that “everyone
has a different favorite, a color, a style, or a cut” as superficial dis-
course of beauty and consumption, yet this discourse allows women
to show their muscles and be assertive and strong in demanding
moral autonomy (self-styling the veil) and expressing individual
difference.
Within the Muslimist framework, in sum, with the emphasis on
iman and the recognition and legitimacy this emphasis confers for
individual difference, women acquire a greater flexibility and free-
dom in self-styling the veil from colors to overall outfits. Because self-
styling is about individual differences, when self-styling is welcomed,
so are individual differences. It is in this frame that Muslimism once
again extends its borders toward a heterogeneous community in
which individual differences generate (and are allowed to generate)
varying religious performances and manners of living.
Sule (of CWPA) says: “I would like to teach them respect. I want them
to respect everything from humans to animals to the environment.
And, of course, self-respect.”
Pinar (of CWPA) says: “We aim to teach them to be honest and not
to lie. We want them to appreciate how precious each human being
is . . . and to be aware of goodness and to pursue goodness. This is
the character I want my kids to have.”
inspired by religious sensitivities, yet not filtered by it. Nur and Ayla
(of MAZLUM-DER) express this as follows:
Pinar says: “After working together and after these meetings, a dia-
logue started and this made it possible for us to have more sympa-
thy and understanding. We felt the need or the urge to get to know
them. When the lesbian groups visited us, we all sat down and
open-heartedly talked and listened to them and discussed many
issues.”
A Few days ago a friend of mine asked me, ‘Are you first Kurdish or
Muslim?’ If I said I was first Kurdish, he was going to accuse me of
being a Kurdish nationalist. If I said I was first a Muslim, then he was
going to accuse me of being an Islamist. I said, you should not ask
this question. Because what you are asking is, would you wear pants
or would you wear shoes? I wear both because they are two different
things.
Muslimists think that while the JDP still holds on to and protects
religious values, it has distanced itself (and religious sentiments) from
extremism and ideological fanaticism. This has enabled the party
to open itself to new ideas and to promote conciliation rather than
polarization. Kemal, a businessman, puts it as follows: “I am content
with the JDP because it opens its arms to many different groups. It
embraces everyone. It opens it arms to the social democrat, to the
religious, to the atheist; excuse me, but this prime minister [Tayyip
Erdogan] is the prime minister also of the prostitutes.”
Seref explains why he left the National Vision Movement cadre to
join the JDP in 2002:
In sum, Muslimists during the period of study in which the JDP first
emerged saw the party as a political actor that could replace polar-
ized politics with political conciliation and tolerance. This played into
Muslimist aspirations to extend interactions with the other, while
implying an additional point: Muslimists seek to influence the state
and political processes by becoming linked to electoral politics.
Muhammed (of JDP) says that he already has Jewish, Christian, and
Buddhist friends. Nur (of MAZLUM-DER) sees no problem in mak-
ing friends with people of non-Islamic religions, and she informs us
that she roomed with an atheist in college. Nur continues, “she was a
very virtuous person.” For others, ethics and morality also function as
a common ground that allows and legitimizes interactions, including
personal ones, with the non-Muslim other. Adem (of JDP) articulates
this very well: “I prefer to be friends with people with good morals.
I would not care whether someone is Jewish or Muslim. I try to go
beyond that and see if they are people of good morals. People might
be atheists, but they might also be morally straight.”
Similarly, Fevzi (of MAZLUM-DER) thinks:
You can find goodness and kindness anywhere you go. You don’t
have to call this ‘Islam.’ I believe, and the history also shows us,
that among, for example, Buddhists, Jews, and Christians, there are
people who are more genuine than most Muslims when it comes to
kindness, humanitarian values, and ideals. The name or the label is
not important. What is important is to embrace such ideals and values
genuinely.
Equally striking is that, when asked if they would like the govern-
ment to ban missionary activities of non-Islamic groups in Turkey,
Muslimists have universally objected to that proposal. Although
they have some reservations, regarding, for instance, the secrecy of
missionary work in Turkey, they contend that such a ban would be
a violation of the rights and the liberties of the non-Muslim other.
Beyond an interest in inter-religious dialogue that one may find in
a variety of religious groups, Muslimists then acknowledge the life
space and demands of the non-Islamic other. A congressman, Musa,
further presses this point. A friend called him, requesting back-up for
a nationalist youth group that was preparing to beat up a missionary
group in town X, in case they got into trouble with law. Musa con-
tinues: “I refused. I told him in no way could I show such support.
I advised him to tell these young kids what they were thinking was
absolutely unacceptable!”
Global Orientations
At a broader level, the motivation to reconcile with the external
other discloses itself in the globalist objectives Muslimists take on.
They aspire to become internationally known civil actors, engage
122 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
Iraq pulled the US towards the Middle East and now it seems like
Iran is inciting the US even more. Iran is defying the US, the whole
world, and everyone. But this is not politics, this is not diplomacy!
Politics requires handling things with conciliation and seeking diplo-
macy . . . Iran is not doing politics; they are swaggering. It is almost like
this man [referring to Ahmadinejad] is a provocateur.
Iran is also criticized for isolating itself from the global society and
for ignoring the current realities of the global order. According to
Namik (of MUSIAD), in an increasingly globalizing world, Iran’s
attempt to isolate itself is a political lapse.
EU Membership
Attitudes toward Turkey’s possible membership in the EU yet again
illustrate Muslimist global orientation and the desire to reconcile with
the West (as well as its disenchantment with anti-Western sentiments).
Almost universally, Muslimist men and women support Turkey’s
MUSLIMIST RELIGIOUS TEMPERAMENTS 123
into the global system and become a global player through her mem-
bership in the EU.
Summary
This chapter has described core religious temperaments that char-
acterize Muslimism, by mapping reality orientations (ontology,
agency, and action) onto the three ds (religion, everyday life, and
politics). As opposed to Islamism, which orients believers toward
religion ideologically, Muslimism views religion in terms of iden-
tity (ontology). This particular orientation to the sacred allows
Muslimists to retreat from literalism and to reinterpret religious
principles based on surrounding currents. Rather than this-worldly
comfort, this reformist impulse seeks ways to make Islamic life and
identity more possible in a secularly designed society while claim-
ing a higher stake in modern life. Moreover, adaptation and rein-
terpretation are not independent from formal theology, but find
their legitimacy and, more importantly, their specific instructions
(terms) from it.
The identitarian orientation toward the sacred, which allows for
reform, also results in a somewhat heterogeneous religious com-
munity, promoting diversity in religious performances (e.g., veil-
ing styles) and lifestyles, more broadly (agency). The definition of
true religion as iman (inner ethics) further reinforces this style of
community, legitimizing human subjectivity and self-expression.
Iman —as something integral to the individual and thus as some-
thing that cannot be regulated or forced by the community or the
state—undermines external disciplining while heightening individ-
ual autonomy. Similarly, the good society is defined as one with a
social conscience and morality, which, again, cannot be developed
by state-imposed religious disciplining. This theological shift from
external to internal discipline and ethics gains further depth in a
parallel but universal-like moral cosmology that is consistent with
Islam, yet not exclusive to it (e.g., being a good human).
This emphasis on morality (both theologically and socially) creates
a common ground on which believers can extend their interactions
with the other, both secular and external (the West and non-Islamic
religions), and develop conciliatory politics (action). Conciliatory
politics includes, importantly, a language of tolerance as well as self-
imposed limits. Muslimist organizations claim a public agency that is
inspired but not filtered by religion (or biased toward the religious).
Tolerance and neutrality, however, have certain limits, which emerge
MUSLIMIST RELIGIOUS TEMPERAMENTS 125
modern life confronts the faithful, all faiths alike, with the same chal-
lenges, which at times can be deliberately offensive. Consider, for
example, the use of a cross by Playboy as a sexual symbol; the con-
troversial caricaturization of Prophet Mohammed; and the recently
launched veiled baby dolls in the form of a suicide bomber advertised
with the words, “she will blow your brains out!”1
Yet, my conversations with Muslimists on modernity have dem-
onstrated that in attempts to deal with the challenges posed by the
surrounding modern order, this new status group undertakes a com-
plicated task. Sule epitomizes this complex undertaking with an
arresting statement: “We cannot live in a separate planet; we have
to find compatibilities and common grounds. However, this does
not mean we have to accept modernity with all its negatives. We
can file or filter out these negatives, and make it more suitable for us
(emphasis mine).” I have expressed this Muslimist attempt for “creat-
ing common grounds between religion and modernity” in broader
terms throughout the book. Neither fundamentalist rejection nor
liberal submission, Muslimists embrace aspects of modern life, while
submitting that life to a religious-moral order and creating hybrid
institutions, discourses, and practices. In contrast to Islamism,
then, Muslimist encounters with modernity are defined by hybridity
(ontology).
Following the three-d schema, we find that in everyday life and
social relations, this hybrid posture toward the modern world (ontol-
ogy) undermines traditional religious codes and authorities, enforc-
ing a process of individuation and rationalization (agency). It marks
Muslimism, moreover, with innovation and creativity (action), as
embodied in formulations of a “guiltless modernity” and an “unapol-
ogetic Islam.”
A few words of caution are necessary here. Although Muslimism
distinguishes itself by its hybrid ontology, the phenomenon of hybrid-
ity is not exclusive to the Muslimist form. Actually, in early Islamic
contexts, including Turkey, and within Islamism too, we find prints
of hybridity2 (e.g., Islamist demands for a sovereign Islamic state).
The point, however, is that although modern influences have infil-
trated Islamism (language, notions, and inspirations), Islamists reject
any charges for hybridity and assert that they are custodians of pris-
tine religion.3 For Muslimism, in contrast, hybridity seems to be a
voluntarist and conscious notion. Muslimists problematize the divide
of Islam versus modernity not only in discourse, but also in practice,
as embodied in the formation of hybrid everyday life institutions and
civil and political formations.
MUSLIMIST CULTURAL ORIENTATIONS 129
Ontology: Hybridity
Similar to Islamists, Muslimists also acknowledge that modernity
and associated processes perceptibly and tangibly affect local cul-
tures, including religion. Differing from Islamists, however, they
conceptualize influences of modernity as “social change.” They
understand this change to be natural and inevitable, and depict
Islamist reactionary and anti-modern discourse as “narrow-mind-
edness,” “fundamentalism,” and “unnecessary conservatism.” Ugur
(of JDP) expresses this critical view clearly: “I disagree with concep-
tualizing these interactions as degeneration or assimilation . . . But
if you say ‘change,’ if you say modernity has produced significant
changes, then I certainly agree.” Lale (of CWPA) similarly thinks
that “modernity influences local cultures and religions.” She con-
tinues, however, to state that: “I do not consider these changes as
losses, or signs that tell us that our society is going down . . . Change
is inevitable.”
Muslimists further develop this view when they claim that moder-
nity has provided Turkish Muslims, and Islam more broadly, with new
opportunities and benefits (both material and cultural). Representing
this line of thinking, Yucel suggests, for example, that modernization
and globalization have raised new questions in Muslims’ minds and
opened them up to new approaches: “Going to the U.S. and seeing
all those magnificent buildings . . . or going even to Moscow and see-
ing the big streets, parks, and hospitals that are inherited from the
Communist era . . . you start asking questions that you would not or
could not have before. With modernity, Muslims are now gaining
new approaches towards other values and lifestyles. . . . ” In the same
way, Ugur asks: “ . . . Why should not we change? . . . I mean we have
a lot of negativities that we realize when we interact and compare
ourselves with other societies and cultures . . . I am not in some sort of
unnecessary conservatism.”
On the other hand, for CWPA women, like Derya and Gulin,
“contemporary freedoms and liberties are extensions of moder-
nity,” and “rather than eroding local identities, modernity enables
identity-finding and identity-formation.” These positive functions
ascribed to modernity emerge, especially when the CWPA women
distinguish the identity and style of their organization from other
organizations of religious women in Turkey. They claim that the
CWPA aims to promote a new Islamic female politics; it is indepen-
dent both from cemaats (religious orders) and political parties; it has
both a religious and a democrat identity (e.g., as reflected in their
130 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
JDP) and businessman Cevdet (of MUSIAD) exemplify this new and
hybrid posture toward modernity as follows:
I think that we can again and again re-produce and re-define moder-
nity and its concepts based on our own cultural experience and val-
ues . . . we cannot disregard or ignore our own cultural heritage; that
would be assimilation, and this is not approvable. But, we can combine
the two. Why not? Why should not we change?
And: “We can make modernity suitable to our own identity and
essential values . . . we can be integrated with the universal modern
values without breaking off from our roots.”
What is advocated in theory translates into praxis as Muslimists
interact with the surrounding modern life, from markets to everyday
life, showing that hybridity is not confined to an abstract intellec-
tual exercise or a discursive claim. Looking at two practical dimen-
sions, modern economy and day-to-day life, we can more closely
examine Muslimist attempts to find common grounds between
Islam (as the only true source of meaning and truth) and modern
life (as the “planet” in which Muslims are to live), and identify the
particular processes as well as tensions involved in the production
of hybridity.
religion. Our prophet’s first wife, Hatice, was one of the wealthi-
est in Mecca and so was Hz. Ebubekir. . . . ” Similarly, Ugur (of JDP)
contends:
(of CWPA) and Cemal (of MUSIAD) more clearly express this rejec-
tion: “I do not separate Islam and the West as two opposite poles . . . I
mean today we are arguing about vacations . . . a century ago people
[Muslims] were having the same arguments on silverware, which was
seen as a Western and alien custom. I find these arguments ridic-
ulous. I am open for anything that would not violate my religious
boundaries.”
“A Muslim desires to take vacation with his family within the
boundaries of helal. He wants to leave the city he lives in and go
enjoy the sun and the sea. I find people who are against this abnor-
mal . . . Such things are windows for Muslims to live a Muslim life.
Otherwise, imprison the Muslim in his house, tell him sports are
incompatible, vacation is incompatible . . . then what? Then he will
end up being a couch potato sitting with a big belly. I don’t think
this lifestyle is desired anymore. Europeans built those hotels,
and if here we shape these hotels in accord with Islam, what is the
harm?”
Here we further see that while embracing contemporary institu-
tions and life, Muslimists are also clearly concerned about remain-
ing within religious boundaries and reshaping modernity along
Islamic lines—this results in hybrid institutions and practices.
Hybridity, as it does in markets and in everyday life, bears acute
tensions; to resolve these tensions, Muslimists try to draw guiding
boundaries.
Although endorsing the idea of an alternative vacation, Muslimist
organizations commonly recognize that such practices work as social
filters for class distinction and prestige. Muslimists are disturbed, or
at the very least ambivalent, about such aspects of emerging Islamic
everyday life institutions as luxury and status seeking. This is espe-
cially strong among MAZLUM-DER members. Even for these
Muslim human rights activists, however, the issue is not that new
institutions such as the Caprice Hotel corrupt Islam, but that they
should be available to all Muslims rather than being exclusive to the
wealthy.
For others, including the ones who have already stayed at the hotel
and ones who would consider staying, the common argument (or the
boundary drawn) is that their interest in the hotel is not related to its
luxurious style, but in its various “Islam-proper services.” They find
Islamist criticisms harsh and unrealistic, especially since there are no
cheaper alternatives. In this discourse, distinguishing one’s self from
status seekers, and maintaining modesty in behavior (e.g., at an open
buffet) and in perception while on vacation, become the focal points
MUSLIMIST CULTURAL ORIENTATIONS 139
I stayed there twice and there are things I don’t approve also. For
example, it is not Islam-proper that people fill up their plates with
amounts of food that they cannot finish, just because they paid for it,
and dump the rest of the food . . . Yes, the hotel is an expensive hotel
but . . . I find these criticisms [referring to Islamism] quite harsh. You
cannot tell people not to go to Caprice Hotel because the hotel is
expensive; especially given that there is no other alternative.
Although positive toward the West, in general, and the EU, in par-
ticular, Muslimists certainly do not refrain from harshly and openly
criticizing Western foreign policy in regions as diverse as Iraq, Syria,
Lebanon, Palestine, and Chechnya. They criticize, moreover, the
EU’s attitude on certain historical issues (e.g., Cyprus, Armenia) and
conservative wings in the EU itself, which aim to exclude Muslim
Turkey from “Christian Europe.” They, however, do not consider
these issues as reasons to abandon EU processes, nor do such issues
result in an anti-Western, anti-global discourse. Instead, Muslimists
separate these criticisms from their general approach to the West,
its values and institutions. This is more broadly, as already noted, a
telling indicator of the hybrid nature of the Muslimist orthodoxy;
it embraces aspects of the modern world polity,8 values, thoughts,
forms of action, lifestyles, and habits, while submitting those aspects
to the Islamic moral order (and Muslim interests).
Agency: Individuation
Along with such heavyweights of contemporary fashion as Donna
Karan and Oscar de la Renta, the 2007 New York Fashion Week
also featured an eco-friendly line from Rabia Haute Couture —a
French title given only to high-quality, expensive fabric sewn with
extreme attention to detail and finish. The artist behind the pro-
vocative gowns that mixed, as one fashion commentator described,
“strong silhouettes and powerful colors of the West with the delicate
intricacies of the East,” 9 was a veiled Turkish Muslim woman named
Rabia Yalcin (also a mother to a young veiled girl). Though known
as a “gown guru,” Rabia also designs veils and Islamic clothing, and
142 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
Within the cemaat structure and culture, they don’t let you
think . . . They don’t let you express your ideas freely . . . This is the very
dead-end in which Muslim societies are stuck in today; Muslim societ-
ies do not think . . . because cemaat(s) say, this is sinful or that is shame-
ful, and they accuse you of disobedience and being a rebel. And God
forbid if you are a rebel . . . then your head is at stake.
At the same time, the changing notions of the self and commu-
nity are not radically individualistic, viewing collective identity,
or communal obligations and ties, as problems and threats to the
individual and her interests. What Muslimist men and women do
reject, however, as Asli describes strikingly, is the submergence of
the individual in the authoritarian community and its authorita-
tive collective identity, leaving no space for individual freedom. In
fact, Muslimists are still committed to the notion of the Muslim
umma and the communal sentiments and ideals this divine notion
preaches. These ideals are as diverse as Muslim solidarity and unity;
having a vivid sense of belonging to the geographically and histori-
cally (the dead and the living) diffuse Muslim community; to more
practical issues, such as collective religious rituals or children’s
socialization.
MUSLIMIST CULTURAL ORIENTATIONS 147
Ayla (of MAZLUM-DER): “Yes. Living apart from the parents before
marriage is actually necessary for women to be able to stand on
their own feet, to understand life, to be competent individuals and
to gain individual autonomy.”
Gulin (of CWPA): “This would allow women to stand on their own
feet. I left home to go to college myself.”
Lale (of CWPA): “Never, never! Girls should not stay at home till
[they] get married.” She continues sarcastically: “ . . . actually there
should be a law or something that would put an age restriction.
Maybe twenty-five. After that age, girls must leave the parent’s
house and have their own place. When you look at the unhappy
marriages, you see that the main reason is girls’ urge to get out
[of the] home. I mean in the home girls are incapable of self-
actualization, self-realization. Then they think marriage might be
a solution; but when they get married they still cannot actualize
themselves or embrace their autonomy.”
Asli (of CWPA): “Throughout college, I lived apart from my parents.
When I graduated, I got married. I wish I had the opportunity to
live by myself, to have my own life and home after graduation. But,
I was not working by then. I really want my children, girl or boy,
to be able to do that.”
It seems, then, that to many Muslimist women, they can find agency
and autonomy only by stepping outside the patriarchally designed
parental and marital spheres. The discourse, however, does not sug-
gest that Muslimist women seek to abandon these spheres and their
roles within them. The period of living alone is rather a transition—
between leaving home and getting married—where, temporarily lib-
erated from patriarchic definitions of and expectations about female
identity and life, woman can find out who they are and establish their
independence. Whether this transition period in fact becomes a foun-
dation on which Muslimist women shape their marriage in accord
with their needs once they linger in temporary autonomous spaces
and become empowered, or whether it turns out to be an isolated
MUSLIMIST CULTURAL ORIENTATIONS 153
Action: Innovation
The 2006 issue of Cerceve, the official journal of MUSIAD, was dedi-
cated to a particular theme: innovation. Overall, the articles endorsed
“innovation” for ensuring company growth and long-term survival,
strengthening companies’ competitive portfolios and power, and as a
necessary component of branding. The articles then introduced busi-
ness owners to micro-level and concrete strategies, and how-to reci-
pes for stimulating innovation, from financing options to the use of
human resources. In most cases, nevertheless, a caveat was added to
the recipes presented: innovation was not just an economic strategy
154 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
In the 18th century, it was the Samurai spirit that saved Japan from
its isolation from the world and from the bloodcurdling feudal fight it
had fallen into. The Samurai considered money and commerce . . . to be
immoral . . . How did, then, these patriots who fought against the cruel,
just like our own Koroglu and Dadaloglu [Turkmen folk heroes] did,
become the architects of the 20th century Japanese capitalism? . . . What
158 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
did motivate the Samurai to abandon the sword and become the back-
bone of giant companies like Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo? It was
the understanding that it was time for the Samurai to come down from
the mountains and harvest its values in new areas. Western capitalism
was necessary, but it was also necessary to give this Western form a
Japanese ethos . . . The Samurai spirit was called upon by the dynasty to
do the job. Future was in the roots ! [emphasis mine].16
We should be at peace with who we are and how we look. Yes, we are
getting older, but Botox or face-lifts damage human originality . . . I
like everything in its original form. I don’t eat genetically modified
tomatoes, not because it is not a tomato but because things that are
not original damage the chemistry of humans . . . why don’t we let our-
selves to live lax and chill? Let’s just get older and have wrinkles!
Clashes and tensions emerge, too, not always (or merely) from dif-
fering religious interpretations of a given modern phenomena.
Interestingly, they may emerge due to different factions’ favoring and
selecting out certain aspects of modernity over others, producing as
such competing imageries of modern life (e.g., cosmetic surgery ver-
sus anti-ageism).
Yet, theological purism is not the only issue that shapes this con-
scious effort to filter out customary beliefs and mores; tradition poses
a much more severe problem. According to Muslimists, habitual and
cultural practices that have taken the guise of Islam are indeed to
blame for erroneous religious interpretations and for stigmatization
of Islam as a category of religion that is intrinsically fanatical, intol-
erant, and prone to violence. Gulin (of CWPA) represents this line
of argument as follows: “We experience lots of negativities due to
improper interpretations and applications of Islam. This ranges from
ethnic discrimination to social violence. But, there are no such things
in our religion. Right now, we should carry out studies that will pro-
vide correct interpretations and provide correct guidance.”
With this separation, Muslimists undertake the task of freeing
Islam from its negative stigmas, hence redefining it to be unapol-
ogetic vis-à-vis modern life. It is noteworthy that issues related to
women constitute a prominent place in attempts to destigmatize
Islam; Muslimists, both men and women, are especially passionate
about making a distinction between traditional customs and Islamic
164 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
Summary
Orthodoxy is not merely a theological matter. The sacred truth
dictates an entire life-ethic. It provides the faithful with a mor-
ally binding guide to interpret and to make sense of life—its nat-
ural laws and history—and to conduct life’s affairs—from bodily
regimens and recreational activity, to interpersonal relationships,
to sentiments about the self and community, to attitudes toward
change. Orthodoxy, thereby, is a cultural matter. Orthodoxy here
is an orthodoxy in practice, and thus usefully understood also as an
orthopraxy.
166 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
Contesting State-Secularism
Both Islamists and Muslimists are critical of the secularist policies of
the Turkish state; however, the content of these critiques differ sub-
stantially from each other. For Islamists, the problem is not limited
to the ways in which the state treats religion. The problem in essence
is secularism itself: the separation of state and religion is incompat-
ible with, in fact a rejection of, Islam. The Islamist critique of state
secularism, then, is more broadly an anti-secular posture negating the
idea of secularism—any form of it—based on religious grounds.
Muslimists, on the other hand, are not debating whether or not
secularism is compatible with Islam. Instead, they bring into question,
and protest against, the ways in which secularism has been, and con-
tinues to be, understood, defined, and practiced in Turkey. Overall,
Muslimists assert that, in Turkey, along with the top-down modern-
ization of the founding elite, secularism has acquired an authoritarian
character; it does not separate religion and state, but subordinates
religion to the state, stepping over its authority relative to individual
moral freedoms.
To evince the rigidity of the existing polity toward religion,
Muslimists refer to the February 28 process during which, they argue,
state institutions and the army not only aimed at ousting Islamic
political actors, but also suppressed religious civil society and individ-
uals. Muslimist women, for example, complain that the effects of the
intervention, especially its furthering of restrictions on the veil, went
well beyond institutional issues spilling over into personal lives; it
cost veiled women their education, career plans, and actual life plans.
The intervention demonstrated moreover, Muslimists insist, that the
state still refuses to view religious groups as part of civil society and
excludes the religious from its definition of patriotism and citizenship,
creating a sense of exile, isolation, and estrangement among pious
Muslims. Asli (of CWPA) epitomizes these reactions in a capturing
statement as she reflects back on the February 28 intervention:
this country, and I was born here. This brings with it an estrangement
and discomfort.
Reformulating Secularism
Consistently across organizations, Muslimists argue that the ways in
which contemporary state institutions understand secularism are not
true interpretations of secularism. A congressman, Muhammed, crys-
tallizes this distinction Muslimists make between true secularism and
state secularism:
Yet they also suspect the secular state for trying to subjugate religion
and to restrict moral freedoms. To address this tension, Muslimists
seek to limit the functions and authority of the state relative to reli-
gion. This attempt is evident in their push for institutional reforms
that would significantly restructure the functions and nature of the
Diyanet, and that of Turkish secularism, more largely.
The reforms Muslimists press for most notably involve univer-
salization of the Diyanet (to represent each faith group equally),
expansion of its autonomy vis-à-vis the state, and its opening up to
the demands, needs, and voices of religious civil society. For exam-
ple, Ugur, a JDP congressman, says: “The directorate should be
expanded and should cover every faith group in Turkey. I mean it
should be transformed to include Jews and Christians . . . I think the
state should also pay salaries to the priests. I mean the non-Mus-
lim citizens pay taxes to this state too, so what about their religious
services? Why does the state pay only for Imams?”
In a parallel vein, Ayla (of MAZLUM-DER) says that: “ . . . the state
should minimize control and liberalize the directorate as much as
possible. I mean the directorate should be able to cooperate with the
civil society and the folk. It should consult the civic society when nec-
essary. And it should address all the people, not some. For instance, it
does not have a bureau for Alevi groups. This is unacceptable.”
Overall, the Muslimist position toward the Diyanet and critiques
of the existing state polity demonstrate that this new form is not anti-
secular. On the contrary, to resolve the tensions between attitudes
about individual moral agency and external authorities, Muslimists
tend toward a separation of state and religion. Secularism in fact coin-
cides with the Muslimist drive to carry out the moral imperative for
a voluntary and conscious faith. We find further, and possibly more
intriguing, evidence for this aspect of the Muslimist political ontol-
ogy: as much as they defy the authoritarian secularism, they also and
quite clearly defy the so-called Islamic state, its concept as well as its
transnational manifestations.
church and a mosque is next to each other. It has been like that for
centuries.”
Similarly, but regarding alcohol, another businessman, Seref, says,
“I don’t think prohibition or banning is a meaningful thing to do.
The environment we live in, the position we have, and the vision we
put forward does not entail prohibition. We are not a closed society;
we are a society with self-confidence.”
Paralleling that, Sule (of CWPA) says, “If a person does not think
that it is haram or wants to drink alcohol, no one can take away that
right from him.”
Yet, whereas they oppose state bans on alcohol and missionary
activities, Muslimists also press the state to regulate and oversee
both. For example, although contending that the state cannot take
away one’s right to drink alcohol, Sule continues by saying, “ . . . but
we have to take precautions for children and the young. We need
to educate the young about the harms of alcohol. Alcohol should
be sold, but should not be encouraged.” Like her, others also push
for public policies that would increase the age limit to buy alcohol;
increase taxes on alcohol; ensure that sellers strictly comply with the
age limit; make sure that alcohol is not sold around school zones or
near mosques; prevent the encouragement and pressuring of alcohol;
and educate the young and children. It is noteworthy that the content
of this education is not religious, but focuses on the social and per-
sonal hazards of alcohol and alcoholism. Regarding missionary activi-
ties, Muslimists favor public policy against illegitimate proselytizing,
such as encouraging people to convert by promising material benefits
or citizenship in Western countries.
Within the framework of the Muslimist political ontology, then,
theological precepts come to inform a pluralistic polity; it is impor-
tant for Muslimists to have a sense that they are not preventing moral
freedoms. Yet, Islamic imperatives limit how liberal the state and its
policies can be. Muslimists take public law and social policy seriously
and refuse to relegate religious sensitivities to the private realm. There
is then a tension between moral demands and social and individual
liberties. It seems that by opposing a total ban on alcohol, Muslimists
try to reinforce their emphasis on individual choice (both as a theo-
logical and a political sentiment). By pressing for regulatory action,
on the other hand, they try to influence public policy. Moreover, they
attempt to distinguish sharply such regulatory actions from a desire
to establish religious law. For example, regulations on alcohol corre-
spond with the state regulations on alcohol found in the non-Islamic
states of the West with well-established democracies.
186 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
place, Muslims will no longer be lured into wrong and will conform
to Sharia out of their own volition (e.g., no longer see the allure of
wearing miniskirts). It is in this utopian theological framework that
the state finds its qualification and necessity for moral agency and, in
turn, where the self loses his or her agency and moral freedom.
Whereas Islamists orient to the state for moral agency and activi-
ties, Muslimists limit the role of the state and view civil society as the
key actor for realigning the profane with the sacred. This shift to civil
agency is not occurring independently or outside of religious beliefs;
on the contrary, it is infused with and filtered through theological
notions and precepts. Muslimists, believe that, even though Islam
provides general moral principles one has to accept and follow, Islam
does not dictate, neither in hadith nor in Quran, specific and defi-
nite political goals and norms, nor does it code or require a specific
type of state. As a matter of fact, Muslimists, as I have documented,
claim that the majority of Islamic rules concern individual practices,
lifestyle, values, and rituals—expressed as ibadet. Muhammed, a con-
gressman, reflects this interpretation as follows: “Islam does not sug-
gest any sort of a state model. But what it suggests is: be honest,
don’t violate other people’s rights, help people, love human beings
and love God, and love nature . . . But again there is no Islamic com-
mand defining a certain state model, which we should consider as an
alternative to democratic governance.”
Yucel, another congressman of the JDP, asserts that God’s revela-
tions do not address the state but individuals, and that it is not reli-
gion but people who inspire for political power:
In its essence, Islam does not talk about state institutions. Neither
in hadith nor in verses can you find a precept like this. Religion was
not revealed to the states. It was revealed to individuals singly. The
state is not an addressee.” He continues: “And any ways, religions do
not claim political power. It is the people who demand for that. For
instance, our prophet does not tell us: go ahead and be presidents,
prime ministers. Ok? There is no such claim. There are only claims by
the individuals.
Since Turkey was formed, there had not been investments in rais-
ing individuals with democratic characters. There had not been such
plan; the plan was to raise monotype citizens, even though the name
of the regime was Republic. The culture of democracy has recently
come to the public attention by people traveling to countries that have
higher democratic achievements and by the EU processes. More cor-
rectly, it has emerged only after the flourishing of civic society and
civic mobilization.
The meaning and appeal of civil society, then, lies in its ability to
challenge the political status quo and to stretch the political system
beyond its existing limits—which, according to Muslimists, are drawn
narrowly by the state along its monolithic ideology. More specifically,
it is through diffusion of civil society, Muslimists contend, that in
Turkey, societal groups have become able to pursue their interests;
diverse identities (ethnic or religious) have found an expression and
legitimacy; and democratic notions have come into public attention.
In brief, Muslimists claim that democratization of modern Turkey
has been accomplished through civil actors and mobilization.
Finally, we also find that the Muslimist commitment to civil
agency is not confined to national limits, but moves upward to the
192 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
In that sense, civil actors are seen to have the capacity to transform
and to influence international institutions and debates beyond or out-
side of state control.9 And Muslimists express a moral obligation to
become involved. Muslimists, more specifically put, see themselves as
interlocutors between superstructures and societal groups of which
representation in the international is undermined or marginalized by
the state (e.g., the story of the veil from the veiled girls’ perspective).
They intend to open up space for and to insert new norms, interests,
and narratives—untold or repressed by the state—into the interna-
tional arena, as such challenging the state by means of international
engagements. As put candidly by a woman of the CWPA: “If the lob-
bies were strong enough, they could have been efficient in resolving
the biases.”
What is one to make out of all of this? Overall, the Muslimists’
orientation to civil agency that we have found and documented across
social spheres (moral, economic, and social orders) implies that the
Muslimist engagement of civil organizing is not geared merely toward
securing religious rights and liberties vis-à-vis the secular state, as
conventional theories would have claimed. Instead, they accept and
make sense of civil society in broader terms: it is adopted as the cul-
tural standard for or the morally superior form of acting in the world,
whether to construct the moral order, stimulate economic growth, or
bring about political change, nationally or internationally.
Sociological Expressions:
What Are They?
For Cemal, the owner of Este World, the desire for beauty is uni-
versal—it is “human nature”; hence, it is neither alien nor offensive
to Muslims. He says: “ . . . your wife might be veiled, you might be
bearded [a practice found in Sunna], but when I look at the mirror, I
MUSLIMIST POLITICAL ETHOS 195
Political Involvement
Muslimism is political, for one, in the sense of being characterized by
a certain political sensibility. This is not surprising. For the faithful,
religious orthodoxy is not just an intellectual exercise; it shapes the
entirety of life, including one’s political attitudes and positions. Those
with Muslimist orientation, too, have articulated a distinct political
ethos. For instance, as we have documented, the Muslimist definition
of true faith and the emphasis this definition puts on religious self-
identity inclines this new form toward a liberal polity and toward the
separation of state and religious authority.
Yet, Muslimism is also political in the more practical sense of
directing people to participate politically and be actively involved in
electoral politics. This also is not startling. Consider, again, the defi-
nition of true faith and Muslimist orientation to the individual; it is
only within a liberal polity where this type of moral definition can be
capitalized and exercised. This means, more thoroughly put, to effec-
tuate certain demands (whether pertaining to moral responsibilities
or markets), movements need sympathetic political elites and policies
that would support their demands. Diverse Muslimist organizations,
thus, seek political support and get linked to parties to bring about a
polity that would enable capitalization of their sentiments, demands,
and needs.
As of the years leading up to and during my study, Muslimists
supported the JDP and invested in it electorally. The party, through-
out its first two terms, articulated with Muslimist sentiments and
coded its party program and discourse in line with those sentiments;
it, thus, gained strong support among Muslimists.
We find the evidence for this strategic support for the party during
this early period in Muslimists’ comparisons of the National Outlook
Movement (NOM) parties and the JDP. Muslimists see the NOM and
associated political parties (especially the Welfare Party) as stuck in
“old politics,” lagging behind the changing global and national reali-
ties. These parties could not apprehend, or even recognize, the rising
Muslim demands to abandon (and question) Islamist impulses with
regard not only to politics but also, and perhaps more importantly, to
style of society and religion (e.g., disenchantment with holistic ide-
ologies, authoritarian communalism, anti-EU discourse, and Islam
versus the modernity divide). In contrast to the NOM, Muslimists
believed the JDP recognized broad global and national changes and
spoke to increasing Muslim aspirations to move out of “old politics”
MUSLIMIST POLITICAL ETHOS 199
(e.g., the party’s attempts to engage the EU, and opening up space
for different segments of society in the political arena). In fact, the
party, to the Muslimist mind, seemed like an alternative that, just
like Este World or MUSIAD, could transcend existing religious and
secular political institutions while formulating a new Muslim politics
that can reflect emerging Islamic orientations to individual rights,
autonomy, and pluralism.
Congressmen, themselves, also viewed the emergence of the party
as a response to the rising demands and urges of religious people
for a “new Muslim politics.” With this understanding, the party had
intended, congressmen asserted, to develop a new framework for
Muslim politicians, one that preserved religious sensitivities but that
also was compatible with current global and national realities (e.g.,
pluralism, democracy).
The language Muslimists articulate in support of the party,
in sum, demonstrates that, first, the political is not off limits to
Muslimists. They are committed to engage political action and actors
to further their rights and interests as religious people. Second,
through this language we realize once more that Muslimism is a
not an extension or a petty instrument of political actors. Instead,
Muslimists support the party because they view it to be in line with
their demands and sensibilities. This means Muslimist support is
likely conditional.
The Muslimist political involvement and the nature of this involve-
ment lead us toward a central issue; by mapping the Muslimist
political topography, I have shown that, just like Islam’s practice, its
political manifestations also vary. More thoroughly put, Islamism is
not the only response Islam can develop to engage the political—
nor to engage this world—if it is to be passionate, or if it is to pro-
tect symbolic boundaries of the Islamic doxa and praxis. In fact, the
Muslimist political ethos directly challenges Islamist political atti-
tudes. In terms of ontology, with its emphasis on iman and religious
self-identity, Muslimism tends toward a polity that would heighten
individual autonomy and separate religious authority and the state.
This ontology orients Muslimists to civil organizing and agency for
moral as well as economic and civil activities; as such, Muslimism is
not centered on capturing the state. Yet, it is still political, and it is
still a project aiming to capitalize a particular reading of Islam. For
this project, Muslimists create new cultural spaces, institutions, and
lifestyles; they, nevertheless, also develop political sensibilities and get
linked to party politics to bring about their political elements. This
200 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
Analytic
Historically, we have seen the conditions that cultivated hints of
Muslimism, but these were quickly quashed due to a resurgence of
statism and entrenched Islamism. Similar, more recent, backlashes,
namely, the resurgence of political Islamism in the mid-1990s, and
the subsequent reassertion of Kemalism through the February 28
intervention, have challenged political liberalism and Muslimism.
Throughout these events, Muslimism has continued to thrive; exter-
nal conditions, too, favored the liberal order as well as the Muslimist
expression of Islam.
Looking first at the original sources of Muslimism, we can assess
that the economic, business, consumer taste, and fashion sites of
hybridity seem to be as strong as ever. Economic recession or inter-
national trade setbacks could adversely affect these sites, but barring
economic reversals, the framework developed here would expect
expansion and diversification of these Muslimist enterprises. Indeed,
increases in exporting and international connections, within the
region and even in Western countries, would further grow these
enterprises.
The illiberal policies of the party during the latter part of its third
term seem to not have encroached into this arena as yet. Nevertheless,
the crucial theoretical point to make is if they did, even with the inten-
tion of supporting Islamic presence, taste, and products, this would
undermine Muslimism because of the incompatibility in ontologies
and ethics. This means, more substantially, that political develop-
ments will also have profound influence on the future of Muslimism.
Beginning with its third term (2011), the JDP has seemed to adopt
a more statist approach, especially in moving away from such key
CONCLUSION 207
does not hinge on some authentic, inner state. The fieldwork and
in-depth interviews of this study present evidence of the Muslimist
qualities of the early JDP. Given its more recent movement away from
many of these elements, if the present interpretation is accurate, we
can hypothesize how Muslimism might evolve, or devolve.
What the present interpretation would suggest is that as the JDP
shifts to a more authoritarian or Islamist style, whether showing its
true colors or undergoing a real change, several possible develop-
ments could happen. One result might be that if the JDP continues in
this direction, it loses Muslimist support. The interviews and general
discourse on the JDP have demonstrated that Muslimists endorsed
the party for using a language that was in line with their core politi-
cal and religious orientations. A dramatic shift from such core ele-
ments may alienate Muslimists. It is, nonetheless, also possible that,
while disagreeing and feel beleaguered, Muslimists may still chose
to support a less liberal regime because they perceive it as the best
of several non-ideal options. After all, the JDP is the most power-
ful political actor that is clearly supportive of religious sentiments
and that can prevent a strong backlash from secularists. In addition,
common electoral concerns, such as political and economic stabil-
ity within a regional context marked by growing sectarianism, eco-
nomic decline, and civil conflict, may continue Muslimist support to
the party. What result would emerge is historically contingent. More
research needs to be done on the social bases and organization of
Muslimism; but based on the current research, anything that estab-
lishes Muslimism’s social bases apart from the state (social, cultural,
and economic including a vibrant Muslimist status group) will more
likely move it away from the party. However, it also would require
independent political mobilization; and here conditions might not be
different from democratic polities in general. In particular, the health
and autonomy of Muslimist-informed civil society actors that are not
co-opted by the party would be crucial conditions.
Beyond these direct, reactive effects, there potentially are more
profound indirect effects that pose challenges to Muslimism. The
shift of the government toward illiberal policies could revive the old
divide of secular versus religion, as well as the traditional enforcers
of this divide. As I have shown, tendencies toward Muslimism his-
torically were undermined or co-opted by Islamist groups precisely
when a strong secular-religion cleavage centered on an authoritarian
state. Historically, the state was secular, but a more Islamist authori-
tarian party would produce the same cleavage with similar results. It
could make openings for committed Kemalist and Islamist actors to
CONCLUSION 209
Normative
What do all of these developments mean for the new Muslimist
orthodoxy and for Turkey, and, at the macro level, for the region?
Looking at these developments, pundits and scholars rush into
announcing the decline and fall of “moderate Islamism” in Turkey
and the possibility of institutionalized democracy in the region. A
turn to authoritarianism or Islamism would alter the political and
broader cultural conditions that might bode ill for Muslimism, but
the shift itself should not be equated with a statement on the capacity
of Muslimism. Such a reductionist and essentialist approach under-
stands religious change solely as strategic ideological change led by
political actors and processes.
In the case of Turkey, I have demonstrated that changes in
religious attitudes are neither led by nor limited to political actors.
On the contrary, historical conditions have favored the rise of a new
Islamic orthodoxy that simply weakened old taboos (and actors
who passionately hold on to these taboos) and allowed Muslims to
embrace aspects of modern life while submitting that life to Islam.
The new orthodoxy was first articulated not in the political arena
but in markets and everyday life. It was practiced not by political
actors but by a new Muslim status group coming from various seg-
ments of society. This group produced hybrid discourses, lifestyles,
and habits, including a political ethos that informed the creation of
the JDP.
The excessive focus on politics is more generally informed by
a divide of cultural versus political, where the political is per-
ceived to be the “serious” and “muscled” dimension of human life,
society, and the interstate system, whereas the cultural is seen to
be volatile and secondary. This is not to deny the importance of
politics and political processes. Political actors, of course, can have
CONCLUSION 211
as actors who are passionately Muslim but, at the very same time,
already and rightfully modern and American. In fact, the Mipsterz
movement is more generally understood and seen, by the members
themselves, as a “third culture or a place,”15 where home and the host
are blended. Similar to cultural sites of hybridity we find in Turkey,
the “third place” reworks aspects of modernity and American every-
day life in line with Islam. The third place and the proudly Muslim
and rightfully modern identity emerging in it undermine Westernist
stereotypes (e.g., the terrorist other or the oppressed other) as well as
puritan Islamism. Moreover, by embracing the hipster culture, which
cherishes self-authenticity and naturalness,16 within a religious sub-
mission, the Mipster blend demonstrates a growing individual ori-
entation and demands for self-expression and religious self-identity.
Overall, this new blend between Islam and hipster culture attests to
a Muslim claim over modernity, which the categories of liberal versus
fundamentalist Islam cannot make sense of or actually recognize. It
should be noted, however, that the movement’s location in the youth
and its emphasis on social inclusiveness (e.g., already bringing out
such questions as belonging and homosexuality) may make the move-
ment especially vulnerable to liberal adaptation; whether it will take
this route is historically contingent.
Pentecostalism and contemporary American Evangelicalism are in
their different ways examples of NROs within Christianity. In fact,
the NRO may be a particularly helpful concept to solve the prob-
lem of “how to categorize Evangelicalism” that has plagued soci-
ologists of American religion for at least three decades. Similar to
the major revival of Islam in Turkey since the 1980s, contemporary
Evangelicalism has challenged common paradigms. As Smith writes:
“Evangelical sensibilities allow neither complete disengagement from
[as with fundamentalism] nor total assimilation into [as with mainline
and liberal Christianity] the dominant culture.”17 This is the precise
reason why, Smith argues, Evangelicalism has been successful: what
differentiates evangelicals is their ability, unlike liberal and funda-
mentalist movements, to maintain both difference from and engage-
ment with American society.18
Moreover, Evangelicalism also undermines the divide of cultural
versus political. Although they do not try to legislate their particu-
lar religious orientations or to impose a narrowly defined Christian
way of life against the majority’s will, they are politically active, give
legitimacy to religious formations that are involved in politics, and are
willing to legislate on particular moral issues (although many would
216 MUSLIMISM IN TURKEY AND BEYOND
Middle East, ed. Larry Jay Diamond, Marc F. Plattner, and Daniel
Brumberg (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press,
2003). For Indonesia, see Robert Hefner, Civil Islam: Muslim and
Democratization in Indonesia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2000).
29. Boli and Brewington, “Religious Organizations,” 203–233.
30. For example, “the AIDS Education Through Imams program
was not only described in a UNAIDS study as remarkably suc-
cessful . . . but was referred to . . . as a model for other countries
to consider incorporating” (Bush, “Discipline and Resistance in
Diplomacy,” 173).
31. Fuat Keyman, “Assertive Secularism in Crises: Modernity, Democracy
and Islam in Turkey,” in Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age,
ed. Linell Elizabeth Cady and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). For a discussion on the tension between
democracy and laicite in Turkey, also see Göle, Islam ve modernlik
üzerine melez desenler, 61–88.
32. Ibid. Also see Markus Dressler, “Religio-Secular Metamorphoses:
The Re-Making of Turkish Alevism,” Journal of the American
Academy of Religion 76, no. 2 (2008): 280–311.
33. Berna Turam, Between Islam and the State: The Politics of Engagement
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); Keyman, “Assertive
Secularism in Crises: Modernity, Democracy and Islam in Turkey.”
34. For a comprehensive discussion on the concept and use of “New
religious orthodoxies,” see Neslihan Cevik and Thomas George,
“Muslimism in Turkey and New Religious Orthodoxies: Implications
for Theorizing Religious Movements in World Society,” Ortadoğu
Etütleri 3, no. 2 (January 2012): 143–181. “New religious
Orthodoxies embrace modern institutions such as capitalist markets,
nation-states, and individualism and simultaneously submit them to
the sacred, moral order of their religious traditions. They are not
liberal syncretism in which individuals pick and chose to form an
idiosyncratic religiosity, nor are they fundamentalist. New religious
orthodoxies select elements of their tradition they identify as fun-
damentals but use them to leverage innovative versions of modern
practices, as seen in Muslimism in Turkey” (170).
35. Peter van der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann, “Introduction,” in Nation
and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, ed. Peter van der Veer
and Hartmut Lehmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1999), 10.
36. For exceptions, see, for example, Göle, Islam ve modernlik üzerine
melez desenler and Bayat, Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements
and the Post-Islamist Turn.
37. Fred Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and
Politics in the Middle East (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996); Bassam Tibi,
The Crisis of Modern Islam: A Preindustrial Culture in the Scientific-
NOTES 225
46. See, for example, Ayse Saktanber, Living Islam: Women, Religion and
the Politicization of Culture in Turkey (London: I.B. Tauris, 2002);
Binnaz Toprak, “Islam and Democracy in Turkey,” Turkish Studies
6, no. 2 (2005): 167–186. Umit Cizre-Sakallioglu and Erinç Yeldan,
“Politics, Society and Financial Liberalization: Turkey in the 1990s,”
Development and Change 31, no. 2 (2000): 481–508.
47. See, for example, Toprak, “Islam and Democracy in Turkey.”
48. See, for example, Metin Heper, “Islam and Democracy in Turkey:
Toward a Reconciliation?” The Middle East Journal 51, no. 1 (1997):
32–45.
49. See especially M. Hakan Yavuz, Secularism and Muslim democracy in
Turkey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
50. Ibid.
51. For a discussion on the JDP and passive revolution, see Cihan Tugal,
Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).
52. For this approach, see especially, Göle, Islam ve modernlik üzerine
melez desenler and Nilüfer Göle, Modern Mahrem: Medeniyet ve
Ortunme (Istanbul: Metis, 1991).
53. Cayir, “İslamcı Bir Sivil Toplum Örg ütü: Gökkuşağı İstanbul Kad ı n
Platformu”; Simsek, “New Social Movements in Turkey Since 1980,”
111–139. Nilüfer Göle’s interpretation of cultural Islam differs from
most scholars in this group for she emphasizes that the cultural turn
does not mean Islam is becoming less political. She argues the new
civic-Islam actually strengthens Islam’s political position by infiltrat-
ing Islam deep in to the social fiber. For this argument, see Nilüfer
Göle, “Islam in Public: New Visibilities and New Imaginaries,”
Public Culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 173–190.
54. Ibid. Also see Göle, “Modernist Kamusal Alan ve Islami Ahlak.”
55. Sema Genel and Kerim Karaosmanoglu, “A New Islamic Individualism
in Turkey: Headscarved Women in the City,” Turkish Studies 7,
no. 3 (2006): 473–488; B. K ı l ıcbay and M. Binark, “Consumer
Culture, Islam and the Politics of Lifestyle: Fashion for Veiling in
Contemporary Turkey,” European Journal of Communication 17,
no. 4 (2002): 495–511; Bilici, “İslam’ı n Bronzlaşan Yüzü.”
56. Ozlem Sandikci and Guliz Ger, “Fundamental Fashions: The Cultural
Politics of the Turban and the Levi’s,” Advances in Consumer Research
28 (2001): 146–150.
57. Baskent Kadin Platformu. See organization’s website: www.baskent-
kadin.org/.
58. Insan Haklari ve Mazlumlarla Dayanisma Dernegi. See organiza-
tion’s website: www.Mazlumder.org.
59. Mustakil Sanayici ve Is Adamlari Dernegi. See organization’s web-
site: www.musiad.org.tr/.
60. Robert Weiss, Learning from Strangers: The Art and Method of
Qualitative Interview Studies (New York: Free Press, 1994), 25.
NOTES 227
economic opposition as well; this, however, does not cancel out the
possibility, or the fact, that Islamism has also been a cultural oppo-
sition. Hakan Yavuz, “Milli Gorus Hareketi: muhalif ve modernist
gelenek,” in Islamcilik, ed. Yası n Aktay and Murat Belge (Cagaloglu,
Istanbul: Iletisim, 2004).
55. For more on civil groups’ increasing shift from ideology to issue-ori-
entation in the post-1980s, and the positive significance of this shift
for democratization, see, Nilüfer Göle, Islam ve modernlik üzerine
melez desenler (Beyoglu, Istanbul: Metis, 2011) and Nilüfer Göle,
“Towards Autonomization of Civil Society,” in Politics in the Third
Turkish Republic, ed. Metin Heper and Ahmet Evin (Boulder, CO:
Westview Press, 1994).
56. Binnaz Toprak, “Civil Society in Turkey,” in Civil Society in the
Middle East, ed. Augustus Norton (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
57. Ibid., 95.
58. İ hsan D. Daği, “Human Rights and Democratization: Human Rights
in the European Context,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies
6, no. 5 (2001): 51–68.
59. Caglar Keyder, “The Turkish Bell Jar,” New Left Review 28 (2004):
65–84.
60. For economic and cultural characteristics of this new bourgeoisie,
see also Ziya Onis, “The Political Economy of Islamic Resurgence in
Turkey: The Rise of the Welfare Party in Perspective,” Third World
Quarterly 18, no. 4 (1997): 743–766, and Ayse Bugra, “Articles—
Class, Culture, and State: An Analysis of Interest Representation
by Two Turkish Business Associations,” International Journal of
Middle East Studies 30, no. 4 (1998): 521. Discussions on the links
between this new entrepreneurial group and globalization of pro-
duction can be found in Umit, Cizre-Sakallioglu and Erinç Yeldan,
“Politics, Society and Financial Liberalization: Turkey in the 1990s,”
Development and Change 31, no. 2 (2000): 481–508.
61. Bugra, “Articles,” 521–539.
62. Toprak, “Civil Society in Turkey,” 95.
63. Ali Karaosmanoglu, “The Limits of International Influence for
Democratization,” in Politics in the Third Turkish Republic, ed.
Metin Heper and Ahmet Evin (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994),
130.
64. Martin van Bruinessen, “Kurds, Turks and the Alevi Revival in
Turkey,” Middle East Report 200 (1996): 7–10.
65. For more details on Özal leadership’s ethnic and foreign policy,
see, Berdal Aral, “Dispensing with Tradition? Turkish Politics
and International Society during the Özal Decade, 1983–93,”
Middle Eastern Studies 37, no. 1 (2001): 72–88, and Muhittin
Ataman, “Özal Leadership and Restructuring of Turkish Ethnic
Policy in the 1980s,” Middle Eastern Studies 38, no. 4 (2002):
123–142.
234 NOTES
66. For a broader argument on the EU’s role in Turkish political reforms,
see Daği, “Human Rights and Democratization,” 51–68.
67. This was part of an effort to eliminate the legal basis for “thought
crimes,” which aimed to show the European Community Turkey’s
commitment to democratiztaion. See Ibid.
68. Banu Elig ü r, The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), 131.
69. See for this approach, Cory Blad and Banu Kocer, “Political Islam
and State Legitimacy in Turkey: The Role of National Culture in
Neoliberal State-Building,” International Political Sociology 6, no. 1
(2012): 36–56.
70. Kuran conceptualizes this as “the Islamic sub-economies” referring
to Islamic enterprises that collectively form an Islamic sub-economy
within the broader economics of the country. See, Timur Kuran,
“Islamic Economics and the Islamic Subeconomy,” The Journal of
Economic Perspectives 9, no. 4 (1995): 155–173.
71. See also Sennur Ozdemir, MUSIAD: Anadolu Sermayesinin
Dönüşümü ve Türk Modernlesmesinin Derinlesmesi (Ankara: Vadi,
2006).
72. For example, Banu Gökariksel and Anna J. Secor, “New Transnational
Geographies of Islamism, Capitalism and Subjectivity: The Veiling-
Fashion Industry in Turkey,” Area 41, no. 1 (2009): 6–18; Ozlem
Sandikci and Guliz Ger, “Veiling in Style: How Does a Stigmatized
Practice Become Fashionable?” Journal of Consumer Research 37,
no. 1 (2010): 15–36; Mucahit Bilici, “Islamin Bronzlasan yuzu:
Caprice Hotel ornek olayi,” in Islamin Yeni Kamusal Yuzleri, ed.
Nilufer Gole (Istanbul: Metis, 2000).
73. For this approach, see Kuran, “Islamic Economics and the Islamic
Subeconomy.”
74. See also Ozdemir, MUSIAD and Emin Baki Adas, “The Making of
Entrepreneurial Islam and the Islamic Spirit of Capitalism,” Journal
for Cultural Research 10, no. 2 (2006): 113–137 for a discussion on
how new Muslim engagements of modern economy differs from and
challanges both Islamist and traditional Muslim accounts.
75. For example, Yalçı n Akdogan, AK Parti ve muhafazakâr demokrasi
(Cagaloglu, Istanbul: Alfa, 2004).
76. For example, Gareth Jenkins, “Muslim Democrats in Turkey?”
Survival 45, no. 1 (2005): 45–66.
77. İ hsan D. Daği, Kimlik, söylem ve siyaset: Dogu-Batı ayrımında Refah
Partisi gelenegi (K ızı lay, Ankara: Imge Kitabevi, 1998).
78. For details on the February 28 process and measures, see Hakan
Yavuz, “Intricacies of Identity: Cleansing Islam from the Public
Sphere,” Journal of International Affairs 54, no. 1 (2000): 21.
79. Ersel Ayd ı nl ı, “Civil-Military Relations Transformed,” Journal of
Democracy 23, no. 1 (2012): 100–108.
NOTES 235
80. For this line of interpretation, see for instance, İ hsan D. Daği,
“The Justice and Development Party: Identity, Politics and Human
Rights Discourse in the Search for Security and Legitimacy,” in The
Emergence of a New Turkey: Islam, Democracy and the AK parti, ed.
Hakan Yavuz (Utah: University of Utah Press, 2006); Ahmet Kuru,
“Globalization and Diversification of Islamic Movements: Three
Turkish Cases,” Political Science Quarterly 120, no. 2 (2005): 253–
274; İ hsan D. Daği, “Rethinking Human Rights, Democracy, and
the West: Post-Islamist Intellectuals in Turkey,” Critique: Critical
Middle Eastern Studies 13 (2004): 135–151; İ hsan D. Daği, “Turkey’s
Akp in Power,” Journal of Democracy 19, no. 3 (2008): 25–30;
Soner Cagaptay, “The November 2002 Elections and Turkey’s New
Political Era‚” Middle East Review of International Affairs 6, no. 4
(2002): 42–48. Ziya Onis, “Political Islam at the Crossroads: From
Hegemony to Co-existence,” Comparative Politics 7, no. 4 (2001):
281–298.
81. Daği, “Turkey’s Akp in Power,” 25–30.
82. Daği, “The Justice and Development Party.”
83. For more information on the JDP policies toward non-Muslim
minorities, see Bayram A. Soner, “The Justice and Development
Party’s Policies towards Non-Muslim Minorities in Turkey,” Journal
of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 12, no. 1 (2010): 23–40.
84. Bayram A. Soner and Sule Toktaş, “Alevis and Alevism in the
Changing Context of Turkish Politics: The Justice and Development
Party’s Alevi Opening,” Turkish Studies 12, no. 3 (2011): 419–434.
85. Ibid.
86. A discussion on how different factions within Alevi groups, namely
traditionalist-religious Alevi wing than the modernist-secularist,
responds to JDP’s “Alevi opening” can be found at Soner and Toktaş,
“Alevis and Alevism in the Changing Context of Turkish Politics,”
419–434.
87. See for example, Morton Abramowitz, “Turkey’s Judicial Coup
D’etat,” Newsweek (April 5, 2008).
88. Details for each amendment can be found at Serap Yazici, “UPDATE:
A Guide to Turkish Public Law and Legal Research,” Globalex (2011).
http://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/turkey1.htm.
89. For an analysis of the changing intellectual, geographical, and stra-
tegic parameters of Turkish foreign policy under the JDP policy, see
Mehmet Ozkan, “Turkey’s New Engagements in Africa and Asia:
Scope, Content and Implications,” Perceptions XVI, no. 3 (2011):
115–138.
90. Burhanettin Duran, “Justice and Development Party’s ‘New Politics’:
Steering toward Conservative Democracy, a Revised Islamic Agenda
or Management of New Crises?” in Secular and Islamic Politics in
Turkey: The Making of the Justice and Development Party, ed. Umit
Cizre Sakallioglu (London: Routledge, 2008), 80–107.
236 NOTES
21. Ibid.
22. For an example that finds the project to be heretical, in fact accusing
it to be an imposition of the West, the EU and the US, and Zionism,
see “Diyanetin Hadis Projesi mi Yoksa AB’nin ve VE ABD’nin İslam
Mudahele Sureci mi?” Vahdet Haber (March 2, 2013), http://www.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY 257
dawla (politics), 24. See also Islamic ethnic groups. See also Kurds
state; state oppression of, 36, 230n28
in Muslimism versus Islamism, polarization of, 41
67–8 European Economic Community
de la Renta, Oscar, 141 (EEC), 43
Demirel, Suleyman, 39 European Union (EU), 205
democracy benefits of, 123
civil society as precursor of, 191–2 Islamic discourse and, 80–1
conservative, 2 JDP and, 3, 60
Muslimist views of, 113–14, Kurdish minorities and, 174–5
181–2 membership in, 20
Turkey’s, as regional model, 25–6 Muslimist versus Islamist views
Democrat Party (DP) of, 122–3
formation of, 38–9, 231n38 Muslimists and, 140–1
religious and education Turkey and, 212
opportunities and, 39, 231n39 European Union Human Rights
democratization, multiparty politics Council, Muslimist suspicions
and, 38–41 of, 192–3
din (religion), 24. See also religion Evangelicalism, 27
Islamist discourse on, 75–9 American, as new religious
in Muslimism versus Islamism, 66 orthodoxy, 215–16
diversity, acceptance of, 104–5, everyday life. See also CWPA;
182, 203 marketplace; MAZLUM-DER;
Diyanet Isleri Baskanligi, 35 MUSIAD
controversy over, 176–9 hybridity and, 136–9
dunya (everyday life), 24. See also orthodoxy and, 165–6, 210
everyday life external authority
Islamic discourse on, 79–85 challenges to, 150–1
in Muslimism versus Islamism, 66–7 Islamist and secular states as, 172
in Muslimism versus Islamism,
e-coup, 59 67–8
elections rejection of, 12, 34, 50, 203
1950s, 39
1970s, 43 faith
2002, 2007, 2011, 57 as choice, 12–13, 22
electoral politics, Muslimist new definitions of, 166
involvement in, 198–200 family, traditional, individual
entrepreneurship, private, 190–1 autonomy and, 150–3
Erbakan, Necmettin February 28 military intervention
banning of, 56–7 effects of, 56
National Vision parties and, 40–1 Islamic discourse and, 82
return to power, 55 Islamist resistance to, 91–2
Erdogan, Tayyip, 212 Muslimist perspective on, 173
Ergenekon case, 207 religious restrictions and, 76,
Este World, 194–6 240n28
etatist economy, 42, 44 Felicity Party, 41, 57
262 INDEX
liberalism modernization
emergence of, 45–9 under bureaucratic order, 35–7
limits of, 183–5 first religious responses to, 37–8
liberalization, 20–1, 60 modesty, Islamic, 1–2
development of Muslimism morality, social, and limits of
and, 205 liberalism, 183–5
international context and, 44–5 Motherland Party, 44, 45
Islam and, 48–9 mualamat, 187
MAZLUM-DER and, 71–2 multiparty politics, 32
Motherland Party and, 44 and attempts at democratization,
Muslim status group and, 49–51 38–41, 231n37
Muslimism’s emergence and, Islam and, 40–1
31, 33 partisanship and, 41–5
radical social change and, 48 MUSIAD (Independent
versus statism/Islamism, 31–5 Industrialists and
Businessmen’s Association), 23,
marketplace 68–9
as cultural site of hybridity, 34, innovation and, 153–4, 156–7
52–3, 131–5 international attention on, 70
new orthodoxy and, 210 Islam and, 194–5
masalih, in Islamic law, 2, 219n2 Muslim economic activities
MAZLUM-DER (Association of and, 71
Human Rights and Solidarity Muslim body, guiltless modernity
for Oppressed People), 23, 68 and, 159–62
aim of, 196–7 Muslim Brotherhood, 8
Caprice Hotel and, 138 Muslim community. See also
human rights and, 29, 156 cemaat (religious community)
international attention on, 70 heterogeneous versus
issues of, 115 homogeneous, 104–5, 124
liberalization and, 71–2 Muslim identity, cultural sites of
military interventions. See coups hybridity and, 54
minority rights, JDP and, 59, 207 Muslim status group, 49–51
Mipsterz (Muslim Hipsters), 27, 214 characteristics of, 33–4
missionary activities Muslim women
attitudes toward, 121 autonomy of, 108–9
Islamists’ position on, 86 erroneous hadith and, 164
Muslimist versus Islamist views Muslimism and, 211
of, 184–5 resistance to patriarchy and,
modernity. See also 151–3
religion-modernity binary Muslim world, anti-West influences
guiltless (see guiltless modernity) in, 42–3
Islam and, 3–4 Muslimhood, cultural, 16–17
Muslimism and, 4–6, 25, 129–31 Muslimism
Muslimism versus Islamism and, as analytic and empirical concept,
66–7 201–2
pious encounters with, 6–11 broader influences of, 211–12
266 INDEX