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Islam in Politics: The Case of Turkey

ONCE IRAN HAD CALLED FOR AN ISLAMIC REVOLUTION, THERE was speculation that the message might elicit a similar response elsewhere in the Islamic world. In fact, soon after the events in Iran, a group of foreign journalists arrived in Turkey and rumour had it that they had come to report on the Islamic revolt expected in Turkey as well. The expected, however, did not take place: instead, had the journalists stayed on, what they would have witnessed was the breakdown of democraci, and the installation of authoritarian rule by the staunchest de enders of secularism, the Turkish military. Islamic politics had been instrumental in exacerbating the democratic crisis, and hence the military takeover was partially directed against the Islamic politics of the National Salvation Party (NSP) and the street politics of radical Islamic groups. Islamic politics was strong enough to figure in the equation of democratic breakdown, but far too weak to detonate an Islamic revolution. The purpose of this essay is to look into the nature of Islamic politics in Turkey in terms of its past ventures in society, its recent involvement in party politics and its prospects for the future. Our fundamental assumption is that the specific characteristics of Islamic politics in Turkey are closely bound up with the state-dominant nature of Turkish political culture and society. More specifically, we attempt to show that changes in the nature of Islamic politics and movements, their organization, aims and strategies, have been in large part shaped by the changing structure and ideology of the state and the centralist elites.