A Movement From Margins to the Center

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 29^th 1998, the 75^th 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.

In order to fully understand the Islamic movements in Turkey, it is necessary to start with a short survey of the main movements. One of the oldest Islamic movements in Turkey is Sufi Naksibendi order. Sufi orders diverge from mainstream Islam in that they seek the truth inside the individual, and further emphasize disciplining of human passions. Requiring an individual self search stemming from self-control and abnegation, Sufi orders are usually considered more personal and esoteric. Having roots as far as in India and the Central Asia, Naksibendi order’s Khalidi sect gained prominence in the Ottoman territories during the 19^th century. Gaining support of the Ottoman Empire as a Sufi alternative to Sufi Bektasi rebels, the movement flourished in and out of the capital. Thereafter Naksibendi order remained as the most politically active Islamic movement in Turkey, because the order believed the realization of the Islamic ideals and survival of Muslim community depends on the state as a necessary instrument (Yavuz 2003: 136). Unlike other Sufi movements, followers are usually urban elites, rather than rural majority. The most important Naksibendi Order is Gumushanevi Naksibendi order which oriented itself around Iskenderpasa Mosque in Istanbul after the Sufi lodges have been outlawed. Turgut Ozal (prime minister and president), Necmettin Erbakan, and Tayyip Erdogan (prime ministers) are all related to the order (Yavuz 2003: 141), and have been encouraged to continue their political practices by the leaders of the order.

Another important Islamic social movement in Turkey is Nurcu Movement, which was created by Said Nursi in the early 20^th century. Nursi, an ethnic Kurd, became a prominent religious leader, especially in the Eastern Anatolia. He didn’t call himself Sufi because he thought Sufism lacked the rationalism the 20^th century requires. In his attempts to bring science and Islam together he asked Sultan Abdulhamid for a University in Van. First Ottoman nationalists, and later Mustafa Kemal tried to marginalize him as a religious fundamentalist. Despite these efforts his works constituted the basis of the strong Nurcu Movement even after his death in 1960. He encouraged his followers to use modern communication techniques to spread his teachings, making the movement become a text based community (Yavuz, Esposito 2003: 10). His teachings aimed at influencing Islamic consciousness, daily life and justice. He, however, was opposed to an Islamic political party, because no political party could represent true Islam. His followers interpreted his teachings in three different ways: Conservatives, Progressives and Kurdish Nationalists. 

The most influential of Nursi’s followers has been Fethullah Gulen who created a global Islamic network. He was born in Erzurum, a city known as the citadel of Turkish conservatism and nationalism. Influenced by this setting, Gulen emphasizes a Turkish model of Islam, which embraces Turko-Ottoman nationalism. Unlike Nursi’s personal teachings, Gulen’s goals are on social level; a just society with a “vernacularized modernity” is the direction his movements goes by still working on micro level, instead of political macro level. He allied himself with the Kemalist state and military until he was expelled from the country after 1997 soft coup. Now settled in the US, Gulen leads the movement, which controls a global network of schools and university preparation courses that is described by the followers as “more than 500 places of learning in 90 countries.”[ii] The movement also owns a private bank (Bank Asya), Turkey’s most popular[iii] newspaper (Zaman), and a television channel (Samanyolu TV). Bank Asya shows how the movement brings modernity and religion together by calling its interest rates “dividend rates”, because interest is considered a sin in Sunni Islam. Due to its size and influence, this paper will focus on Gulen movement as the best representative of mainstream Islamic social movements in Turkey. 

Here the claim that the Turkish Islamist movements are modern requires a definition of modernity. This claim certainly doesn’t go hand in hand with the modernization theory’s definition of modernity that claims that choice is either Mecca or modernity in the Middle East.  This polarization can be easily undermined by taking the idea that traditions are usually invented and closely related to concept of modern nation-state (Hobsbawm 1983, 13) into consideration. In this paper the term modern will be defined by the belief in progress on both social and personal levels. This also brings about both social and economic freedom, in means of free market economy and human rights and freedoms. Nation-states and nationalism are also defining aspects of modernity. Defined this way, modernity isn’t against Islam and or under ownership of a single civilization, namely the West. Regarding religion’s role vis-à-vis modernity, as a free agent in a free society, “individual’s decision to participate in religious movements or to support religious parties is a rational choice like any other decision.” (Tepe 2008: 45) By this correlation of modernity and religion, two concepts are not mutually exclusive.

Turkish Islamic Movements have adapted themselves to modern world by positioning themselves as actors inside the Turkish nation-state, which they support overtly. Gulen movement’s support for the nation state has been a clear one: “he gives priority to community and the state over the individual.” (Yavuz, Esposito 2003: 29) Gulen thinks although the Kemalist state oppresses the Islamists, a state has to be supported since it is better than anarchy. Naksibendi movement also endorsed the nation-state building, even earlier as the nation building efforts were being made in the Ottoman Empire with its “notions such as love of homeland and defense of the nation.” (Yavuz 2003: 138) During the War of Liberation against the colonizers, Naksibendi sheiks supported Mustafa Kemal’s efforts to mobilize people against the enemy. This support of Islamist movements for a Turkish nation state was rooted in the teachings of Islam, which sees order very important. When Erdogan, the current prime minister of Turkey, has been prosecuted by the state, he said “This state and this flag belong to all of us. There will be a day that mistakes will be repaired.” (Cited by Tepe 2008: 214) This statement depicts the pragmatic side of the close relationship of Islamists with the nation state. As in the case of Justice and Development Party, by not positioning their movement against the nation state, gradually the leaders of the movement earned enough power to control it. All these movements carefully found their niches in this still self-defining nation state.

In order to ally themselves with the secular nation state, the Islamic movements secularized their inner structures. Initially, National Outlook Movement of Erbakan adopted “state centered massive growth and social transformation” (Tepe 2008: 183) notion of the secular state.  The movement transferred experts in, who hadn’t had any Islamic training under the movement or under its Iskenderpasa Sufi Order, in order to structure its secular, mundane goals. After gaining public support, those experts like Abdullah Gul later caused the separation of Justice and Development Party from National Outlook movement. Party leaderships of both movements constituted of highly educated people, dominantly engineers and lawyers in the NO movement while dominantly business, finance and communication oriented experts in JDP (Tepe 2008: 201,221). JDP also was the first party to assign referees to monitor internal democracy of the party. Gulen Movement applied secular strategies in their education networks; all classes are secular and religious ideas are transmitted only by example setting behavior and communal extracurricular activities. In a system which depends on rational thought, secular inner structure was understood to be the key to success for even the religious movements.

As a part of their secular and modern strategies, Turkish Islamic Movements created text based “Imagined Communities”[iv]. Nurcu movement created its network of “textual communities known as dershanes” (Yavuz, Esposito 2003: in which reading and discussing works of Said Nursi created the imagined community of his followers. Even after his death mutual reading of his work created the ties which bind the Nurcus from every province of Turkey in a horizontal way. Naksibendis also followed a similar path after the movement transformed itself into educational and cultural establishments after the persecution of Sufi Orders by Ataturk. Thereby, reading became an integral part of Islamic life in the Kemalist Turkey. Gulen created a similar imagined community by the Lighthouses, which are dershanes of Gulen movement and its imagined community built itself by the later creation of the movement’s global education network, television and radio stations and daily newspaper.  Gulen Movement became a perfect imagined community, members of which have the same education, read the same newspaper, entertain themselves in the same way, and discuss religion by same means. Gulen mobilizes this colossal imagined community with his articles, books and sermons, which reach the followers by these modern tools. The movements proved the modern imagined communities can also have religious bases.  

The horizontal relations between the movement and the followers resulted in objectification of religion in those imagined communities. In Nurcu circles, dershanes are the settings in which religion is discussed on a very personal level rather than a dogmatic level: “In the deshanes, people are asked to see Nursi as their dost (friend) with whom they converse on intimate terms” (Yavuz, Esposito 2003: 15). Under these conditions there is no intermediary or vertical obstacle between the founder and follower. Thereby, the follower is able to personalize his understanding of religion. Like Nursi, Gulen sees dogmas as obstacles that need to be overcome. He sees the objectification of religion as the panacea to Islamist extremism: “The fiction that door of consultation has been closed has put Islam in the hands of bigots” (Cited by Sevindi 2008, 69). Both Nursi and Gulen encourage their followers to analyze the religion rationally to create a modern personal understanding.

One of the reasons, the Islamic movement rose as a modern movement was the fact that it was born as an urban movement, rather than a rural one. As Yavuz reports, before 1960s, Turkish elite was dominated by the urban population and Ottoman Muslim emigrates from Balkans and Caucasus, where Islam is less conservative. The Kemalist State did a good job of transforming these communities into laicized communities, while Sunni conservative Turks stayed untouched in the rural central and eastern Anatolia. Due to import substitution industry, mechanization of agriculture and the population boom of the country, a huge wave of migration hit the urban centers such as Istanbul and Ankara after 1960s. The same wave was bound to hit smaller urban centers such as Denizli, Bursa and Kayseri during 1990s as export based private industry boomed.  Instead of staying excluded from the urban life, these masses quickly started to take their parts in the bureaucracy and the market with their mobility aspirations. Feeling disconnected from the social institutions the Kemalist state formed, they gathered in religious circles such as Naksibendi and Nurcu movements. Naksibendi Movement wisely positioned its headquarters in the Fatih neighborhood of Istanbul, “an area surrounded by the universities.” (Tepe 2008: 189). The next generation of this Islamist urban population was their target, and the Islamic movements oriented this youth towards the best positions in the country. Entrepreneurs coming from this movement (also called Anatolian Tigers) started a struggle against the state-led established elite of Istanbul. As well as a monetary struggle, it was an identity fight between Sufi order teachings and the teachings of expensive foreign private schools of Istanbul for presence in the Turkish public sphere. The struggle also affected the politics; in last two decades, two PM’s (Erbakan and Erdogan) came from Iskenderpasa Sufi order, just as two PM’s were the graduates of American Robert College High School (Ecevit and Ciller). This struggle for power was an urban, market-based, legitimate one.

Not only successful modern movements of 20^th century, the Islamic movements were also very easily adaptable to global and liberal world order after the cold war’s end. Because the movement’s resources came from Anatolian Tigers, globalization and free trade contributed to Islamic movements’ success via the Tigers’ export revenues. The Islamic movements easily connected the financial successes to their own causes: “They view prosperity as demonstrating God’s grace to his believers.” (Yavuz 2003: 30) Naksibendi Movement’s latest head Cosan even related Adam Smith’s “the invisible hand” to divine wisdom (Yavuz 2003: 142). With the rise of Anatolian Tigers, aforementioned struggle between established elite and new conservative bourgeoisie defined the Secularist-Islamist tension. However, both the established elite and the Tigers requested liberal economic policies and good relations with the EU and the IMF, and Erdogan allied himself with both sides of “the money”, new and old, by promoting those. The secularist politicians kept their old assumption that this struggle was between “have’s and have not’s”, between moderns and reactionaries, and could not benefit from the changes in the last decade. 

Not only the economic liberalization but also the political liberalization was a force behind the Islamic movements. Clearly under a regime that is defined by laicizing the state and its population, Islamic movements preferred more freedom. As early as the first decades of the republic, Nursi asked for a state that does not have any constitutional ideology (Yavuz, Esposito 2003: 11). Islamic call for freedom was based on the fact that the smaller Kemalist state meant larger opportunity spaces for Islamic establishments. The Kemalist state-led institutions never favored agents with Islamic tendencies. Not being able to inject themselves into the state, Islamist movements got stronger as the state got smaller. As political reforms reduced sanctions on private ownership of education and press, Islamic capital created its own means of communication. This communication was further supported by the increased freedom of expression that has been brought about by the EU adaptation reforms. Now without the state’s direct censorship the Islamist counterargument could be transmitted to the masses.

In accord with Islamist support for larger freedom, the Islamist movements largely supported individual development and consciousness, two essential aspects of globalized world’s people. Gulen may be the Islamic leader who most openly encourages his followers to be active citizens. He sees being able to reason as the foremost requirement of Islam, and defines Muslims as proactive viceroys of God on earth (article by Kuru. Yavuz, Esposito 2003: 124-129). Rather than obedient citizens of a state-led movement, Gulen wants his followers to claim right to be able to change their environments. JDP also pronounces the difference from the preceding political parties of National Outlook Movement, in that JDP aims at a progress that will be brought about by individual endeavors. “Individuals have the capacity to mold this change” (Tepe 2008: 210) is the way JDP defines the change that will come as it leads the country. Nevertheless, defining Islamic movements as true liberal movements would be a mistake because just like Republicans, they have normative goals. They define the problem in the nation in their own ways and believe there is a certain remedy, which involves religion. For instance, their stance against Alevi sect of Islam is marginalizing this sect, although JDP’s rhetoric ostensibly supports the religious freedom.  Although they can’t be called liberal, for their purposes the Islamic Movements support individual’s free will development as a general concept.

Commoditization of Islamic symbols also shows the ability of Islamic movements to utilize privatized system for their own benefit. As the Islamic market in Turkey grows the Islamic bourgeoisie take advantage of entrepreneurial opportunities, even the ones using Islamic symbols for profit. Tekbir Headscarves company is a good example of how the religiously emotion filled words are used to attract customer attention: “As the word Tekbir asks all believers to pronounce the greatness of God, so would the dresses and apparel sold in this company’s shops.”[v] Along the lines of modern consumerism, now the customer can even buy “piousness”. Similarly after 1990s Gulen Movement’s meetings moved to 5-Star Hotels, as religious movements started buying a powerful image. In my informal interviews with many Republicans, the veiled woman in expensive foreign cars turned out to be an important symbol of rise of Islamic movements on Republican minds. In the last decade the Islamic power positioned itself in the center of public sphere through its wealth. The Islamic bourgeoisie showed itself to the world by consumption choices: shopping at pro-Islamist malls (such as Cevahir), wearing expensive silk head-scarves that may have been produced by a Turkish-Jew entrepreneur’s company (Vakko), driving German SUVs, donating huge sums to pro-Islamist educational Hostels. On Fridays, as Islamist bourgeoisie pray alongside 3000[vi] of their workers in the colossal mosque next to Denizli Industrial Park, in the parking lot their numerous BMW and Mercedes Cars exhibit the pro-Islamist power to Republicans passing by on the road between Denizli and Ankara.

The Republicans were right with their claims that the backward movements can not win against them. Islamist movements gained power against them because the movements were progressive and modern. The movements recognized and supported the nation state as a guarantee of the Muslim community’s security. They promoted Turkishness as well as Muslimness. With their secularized structures they gained legitimacy and fought a power struggle with rational methods. They opened the field of religion as well as field of politics to discussion in order to benefit from changes, and to be able to adapt easily. The movement’s followers were mostly educated and urban, not lacking modern skills of their republican counterparts. The followers easily succeeded in creating business networks that counterbalanced the elitist state-led business networks. On their way to adaptation and success in an age of globalization they did not have extremist conservative stances against using religious identity for economic or political purposes. The Islamic movement in Turkey was not a countermovement of the marginalized to damage modernity, but rather was a clever movement from the margins to the center of modernity. The 43% percent Islamist vote and the huge mosque with luxury cars in the parking lot are not coincidences in Denizli of 2008, which is still geographically closer to Greece than Iran.

Bibliography:

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·                     Yavuz, M. Hakan and Esposito, John L. Turkish Islam and the Secular State: the Gulen Movement. Syracuse University Press, 2003.

·                     Navaro-Yashin, Yael. Faces of the State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey. Princeton University Press, 2002.

·                     Tepe, Sultan. Beyond Sacred and Secular: Politics of Religion in Israel and Turkey. Stanford University Press, 2008.

·                     Houston, Cristopher. Islam, Kurds and the Turkish Nation State. Berg, 2001.

·                     Jung, Dietrich and Piccoli, Wolfgango. Turkey at the Crossroads. Zed Books Ltd, 2001.

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·                     Sevindi, Nevval. Contemporary Islamic Conversations: M. Fethullah Gülen on Turkey, Islam, and the West. Translated by Abdullah T. Antepli. SUNY Press 2008.

·                     Cinar, Alev. Modernity, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey: Bodies, Places, and Time. Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2005.