Once considered extremist marginal groups, the Islamic movements moved to the center of Turkish politics. If someone told my republican parents two decades ago, that in 2007 our industrial home-city, Denizli, would be in the American newspaper New York Times, they could never guess that it would be about Islamist power rising in the city[i]. The same year, in the parliamentary elections, 43% of voters in province of Denizli voted for Justice and Development Party. In light of these, a question that will guide this paper rose in my mind. On October 29th 1998, the 75th anniversary of the Republic, when a huge crowd was marching the streets of Denizli, chanting “Turkey is secular, and will stay secular”, many felt that their city was united under the ideas of Kemalism. Less than a decade later, Denizli, even wealthier and more industrialized after the export boom, voted for an Islamist mayor and 4 Islamist MPs. There was a movement taking place, one that almost nobody in the crowd of 1998 fully understood. They all thought the Islamist movements in Turkey were backward marginal movements that were bound to disappear in the process of modernization. However, the juxtaposition of religion and modernity, two very hard concepts to define, was to have very complex outcomes as well. Rather than backward anachronistic religious movements, Islamic social and political movements in Turkey are movements along the lines of modern world order that is defined by nation states, market economies and individual rights. These movements also effectively adapted to globalization and worldwide privatization of the post cold war era. More: Read the rest of this entry…