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The Pitfalls of Secularism in Turkey: An Interview with Deniz Kandiyoti

Deniz Kandiyoti is Emeritus Professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her work on gender, development, nationalism, and Islam has been deeply influential within feminist studies, development studies and Middle Eastern studies. Her path-breaking essay ‘Bargaining with Patriarchy’ appeared in the journal Gender and Society in 1988. She is the author of Concubines, Sisters and Citizens: Identities and Social Transformation (1997) and the editor of Fragments of Culture: The Everyday Life of Modern Turkey (2002), Gendering the Middle East (1996), Women, Islam and the State (1991).

of the state with heterogeneous populations ranging from the Balkans to the Arab Middle East, granted relative autonomy to local communities under shar'ia legislation that subjected non-Muslims to a discriminatory tax system and different sartorial and residential rules. The Tanzimat reforms of 1839, that were enacted under pressure from imperialist powers in an attempt to modernize and save the failing empire, imposed a new notion of citizenship that granted equal rights to non-Muslim minorities. This amounted to nothing less than an onslaught on the legal and philosophical foundations of the Ottoman state where shar'ia rules stipulated differences in the rights and entitlements of members of the umma as opposed to non-Muslims.

Following these reforms, fears of further European encroachment on
Ottoman territory grew and the political current of Ottomanism developed in an attempt to unite the Empire under an inclusive notion of citizenship, proclaiming the equality of all Ottomans. The concept was, however, practically still-born as the secessionist movements of the Balkan provinces went on unabated. Pan-Islamism became the favoured state policy during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (r. 1876 -1909)   Keeping the historical context in mind helps us to discern that the entanglements of the republican state with Islamic actors are far from new. After Turkey's accession to NATO in 1952 and during the Cold War years Islam was being promoted as an antidote to communism and an infrastructure of associations, newspapers and publishing houses was systematically put in place. Since the transition to multi-party politics in 1946, the accommodations between the leaders of religious communities -such as the prominent Nakşibendi and Nurcu orders -and secular political parties, who vied for electoral support from their followers, tended to stop short of more radical demands for constitutional and legal de-secularisation. This changed, however, when political Islam entered electoral politics during and after the 1970s, through a succession of political parties led by Necmettin Erbakan and his Milli Görüş (National Vision) ideology, partly inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood. The state's vacillations between accommodation and repression of Islamic actors increasingly shaped the political field.
Ironically, it was the so-called Kemalist military, the self-appointed guardians of secularism, who set the stage for the expansion of Islamic civic activity and encouraged the public expression of Islam after the 12 September 1980 military coup. They made an official transition from secularism to religion-based nationalism by endorsing the so-called Turkish-Islam Synthesis (TIS) promoted by the right-wing think-tank, Intellectuals' Hearth, in order to 'nationalize' Islam and manufacture public consent for the consolidation of military power. The 1982 Constitution passed under their watch made religious education compulsory, the Directorate of Religious Affairs increased its power and reach and publicly-funded religious education received new impetus.
The AKP, which is an off -shoot of the Milli Görüş, came to power in 2002.
It broke with its parent constituency in significant ways, most notably in its strong commitment to harmonization reforms and EU membership. This enthusiastic pro-EU stance was without doubt related to the fact that it offered a window of opportunity to broaden the political, economic and cultural spaces that had shrunk as a result of the so-called 28 February 1997 process, an intervention short of a coup that gave the Turkish armed forces even greater scope in influencing the public policy process. The EU democratization reforms were seized upon by the ruling party as an opportunity to finally eliminate the grip of the military on politics and to provide Islamic actors with more autonomy by transmuting religiously based political and social demands (such as the freedom to wear the headscarf) into democracy-based claims framed in the language of human rights and multiculturalism. In contrast, the conversion of the iconic Hagia Sophia church from a museum to a mosque had met with little opposition. This was an issue that had been pushed for years by Islamist constituencies, some openly advocating a return to shar'ia law. As late as 2019, the president had been reluctant to act on this question, warning that such a move would have incalculable costs for mosques and believers abroad and in terms of foreign relations. Yet amidst a pandemic and a deepening economic crisis this move was deployed as a trump card to rally the masses and to stage an assertion of national sovereignty. It is the emphasis on sovereignty that cowed the opposition into acquiescence. In the case of the Istanbul Convention, however, Erdoğan might have overplayed his hand by pandering to its critics, creating an unexpected backlash among women, uniting Muslim women joined and their secular sisters in a shared opposition. This was no trivial matter since the AKP is greatly reliant on its female voter base that according to past polls supported the party and the leader to an even greater extent than men.

FD: How do you explain the AKP's appeal to women?
DK: For women of the elite who were beneficiaries of state largesse with positions in the media, in business or in NGOs, loyalty was understandable.
Ironically, these were also the women who were prepared to break ranks when their rights were at stake, as demonstrated by the ongoing struggle over the Istanbul Convention.
The story is somewhat different for women of popular classes. One of the principal pillars of the AKPs electoral success had been the improvement of the economic conditions of the poorer strata through the expansion of welfare entitlements (these made up 0.5 percent of G DP in 2002 and rose to 1.5 percent of GDP by 2013). There is a gendered pattern to welfare distribution with women making up the majority of aid recipients since they are targeted as mothers and as carers of the elderly, sick and disabled.
Moreover, women are not just passive consumers of benefits but active participants in daily interfaces with public bodies at the local level that provide them and their children with health services, educational support and other outreach activities. For women of the popular classes, especially those of rural extraction, this creates a new sense of "citizenship through entitlement". What is more although the funding for these activities come from taxpayers' money, sometimes augmented by charitable giving, the beneficiaries are persuaded that they result from party largesse-a belief no doubt cemented by the distribution of in-kind help for winter fuel and basic foodstuffs from party coffers especially during election periods. That is why the electoral loss of the most important metropolitan municipalities was such a bitter blow to the regime since it lost one of its main channels of political patronage through the distribution of funds, services and jobs.
However, the proof of women's loyalty does not lie in voting behaviour only but in their demonstration that they are among the worthy who have absorbed the party's message about their god-given vocation as mothers and home makers and those who realize that only the deserving will be protected. I would remind those who think that the price of protection is too high that trading acquiescence and loyalty against protection and security is the oldest deal with patriarchal power in all its forms. This also explains the fury at the soaring levels of violence against women and the apparent impunity of perpetrators which gives the lie to promises of protection and dignity.

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The last International Women's Marches on 8 March, that now also feature some headscarved women, were met with police brutality. The Gay Pride marches were banned altogether and homophobia reached an unprecedented peak. Indeed, one of the allegations made against the Istanbul Convention was that it encouraged homosexuality and destroyed the family. Although KADEM, a government approved women's NGO mounted a spirited defence of the Convention they had earlier been at pains to dissociate themselves from these charges by triggering an anti-Pride campaign on social media denouncing "gay perversity". When it came to the rights of sexual minorities any consensus about core issues relating to women's rights could easily unravel and reveal their utter fragility. This does not prevent some feminist groups in Turkey from castigating one another in terms that are utterly familiar to any UK readership that has been following the bitter debates between radical feminists who have reservations about an overly liberal gender assignment regime and others who denounce them as TERFs. Try to imagine a country where the spectrum of opinion ranges from those who sanction underage marriages and marital rape to feminists who fall out over gender reassignment practices. These are the sorts of parallel universes and the levels of cacophony you find in Turkey. Sadly, the most conservative platforms are often the ones with the loudest voices, making an insistent bid for legislative changes. The greatest challenge will be to form broadbased political coalitions that cut across gender, religion and ethnicity in defence of pluralism and democratic rights.