islam and turkish national identity

8/2/2019 Islam and Turkish National Identity

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SLAM AND TURKISH NATIONALIDENTITY: A REAPPRAISAL

D O V W A X M A N

ABSTRACTThe rise of islam ism in Turkey has been widely viewed as the primarythreat to the prevailing official conception of Turkish national identity.According to many observers it lies at the heart of Turkey's identity crisis.This view, however, greatly oversimplifies the relationship betweenKemalist nationalism and islam. We need to radically revise the prevalentunderstanding of Turkish nationalism as a form of secular nationalism, and

the relationship betvveen Turkish national identity and islam . This articleargues that islam plays a pivotal role in constituting Turkish nationalidentity and that it has gradually been accommodated within the officialboundaries of Turkish nationalism. By analyzing the relationship betweenislam and Turkish national identity and nationalism, we are able to betterassess the so-called Islamist challenge in Turkey. The debate betvveenIslamists and secularists in Turkey is about the importance, not theexistence, of islam in shaping Turkish national identity, and the policyimplications of this. The rise of political islam in Turkey, therefore, doesnot necessarily signal the demie of Turkish nationalism or the crisis ofTurkish national identity.

KEYWORDSTurkey, islam, Islamism, Secularism, Nationalism, National identity,identity Crisis, Kemalism.


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2 THETURKSH YEARBOOK [VOL. XXX

1 . In t rodu c t ion : A Turk ish Iden t i ty Cr is i s?The nature of Turkish national idcnti ty , indeed the veryexiste nce of Turkish nationa l identi ty , l ies a t the heart ofd iscuss ions o f the Turk ish Republ ic bo th pas t and p resen t . 1Do me stic and foreign observers have consis tently raised thequestion of Turkey 's national identity since the establishmen t ofthe Republic in 1923, frequcntly to the frustration of many T urks

in official positions who wish to focus on more concrete and lessc o n t r o v e r s i a l m a t t e r s . De s p i t e t he o b j e c t i o n s o f T u r k i s hoffcialdom, however, the identity question has refused to go away.It has reared its troublesome head again and again, representing apersis tent theme of journalis t ic and academic analysis of m odernT u r k e y . 2 Do the Turks really have a uniform national identity, andif so what is it? Do Turks see thcmselves as mem bers of the West orEast? As Europe ans or Middle Easterners? A s Turks f irs t o rMu slims first? Do the Turks really constitute a nation, or are theymerely an aggregation of disparate and heterogeneous gro ups ? 3What place does religion and ethnicity have in Turkish nationalidenti ty? These are some of the common questions frequentlyasked by Turks themselves as well as outside observers. Yet theypermit no easy answer. Any response invariably raises a host offurther q uestions and often fierce controversy. Such que stions donot easily lend themselves to the methodological tools of the socialsciences. M easurem ent and testing appcar woefully inadequ ate incapturing the ambiguous, slippery and shifing nature of national

^ccording to the Turkish scholar Berdal Aral, "It is misleading to speak ofTurkey as though it represents a single, coherent entity". Berdal Aral,"Turkey's Insecure identity from the Perspective of N ationalism",Medilerranean Quarterly, Winter 1997, p. 80.2T h e Financial Times, for examplc, describcd Turkey as a "country caughtbetween two continents, betvveen two traditions, two trends of history".Financial Times, "Survey of Turkey", 23 May 1998, p. 4.3Aral, Turkey's Insecure identity, p. 79, \vrites: "Although Turkey has madegreat strides toward creating a national identity among various ethnic andcultural groups, it is stili difficult to speak of a Turkish nation thatrepresents some kind of coherent, unified, and homogeneous collectivity ofindividuals". Em phasis in original.


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identity. Stud ying nation al identity is, in the words of onepractitioner, "a messy business".4The q uestion of Turkish national identity has often beenframed in terms of an identity cris is.5 According to one author:"For the last 250 years the Turkish nation has undergone anidentity crisis of tremendous proportions .. .".6 Another states that:"Few countries in the modern period have had their identitycontestcd as bitterly and interpretcd as variously as the Republic ofT u r k e y " .7 The idea that Turks suffer from an identity crisis hasnow gained such wide currency in press and acadcmic circles thatTurkish leaders regularly address the issue in their speeches andwritings. For instance, in a speech in Washington DC on April 271999, Turkish Prcsident Sleyman Demirel declared:We have a mltiple cultural hcritage and in some ways a multipleidentity. As individuals, identity cannot be summed up in one word. Itis the same for our nation's identity. We ccrtainly do not have, asoutsiders sometimes claim, an identity crisis. Turkey and the Turksare very conscious of their identity and heritage. Ordinary people inTurkey do not see hemselves as living in a land torn betvveen east andwcst. They relish variety and they see their country as a land enrichedby a multiple heritage.8

4MichaeI Barnett, Paper delivered at international conferencc on "Identities inTransition from War to Peace", The Leonard Davis Institute forInternational Relations, The Hcbrew University, Jerusalem, December 1,1999.->See for instance, Dov Waxm an, Turkey's identity Crises: Domestic Discordand Foreign Policy, Conflict Studies 311, Research Institute for the Studyof Conflict and Terrorism, Leamington Spa., UK, 1998.6Ozay Mehmet , Islamic identity and Development: Studies on the IslamicPeriphery, Routledge, London and New York, 1990, "Privatizing theTurkish Economy", ch.10, p. 214.7Hakan M. Yavuz, "Turkish identity and Foreign Policy in Flux: The Riseof Neo-Ottomanism", Cridque, Spring 1998, p. 19.8 H . E. Sleyman Demirel, President of the Republic of Turkey, Speechdelivered to The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, WashingtonDC, April 27, 1999. [http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/media/demirel].htm. See also Turgut zal, Turkey in Europe and Europe in Turkey,Ankara, Republic of Turkey, Ministry of Foreign Affairs,[http://www.mfa.gov.tr/grupe/eg/eg05/20.htm].
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/media/demirelhttp://www.mfa.gov.tr/grupe/eg/eg05/20.htmhttp://www.mfa.gov.tr/grupe/eg/eg05/20.htmhttp://www.washingtoninstitute.org/media/demirel


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4 THE TURKISH YEARBOOK [VOL. XXXNor is this a recent development, simply a product of thegeneral preoccupation with issues of cultural identity influenced bythe current postmodernist zeitgeist. ver twenty years ago, aformer Turkish am bassador wrote that : "Today many peoplevvonder whether Turkey is suffering from an identity crisis?"; andanother expressed his exasperation at the continued discussion ofTurkey 's "search for identity", stating: "I think it is time for Turkeyto say 'Turkey is Turkey'. . .Turkey will have much to gain bysaying her ambiguous identity is an identity in itself, which is that

of a country betvveen tvvo vvorlds and there are ad vantag es to dravvfrom tha t" 9 . The rhetorical proclamations and protestations ofTurkish offcials have, hovvever, failed to satisfy skeptical ob servers.If anything, rather than putting the issue to rest, their num erousstatements have only served to place the issue of Turkish identityhigher on the political agenda.Th is article vvill therefore make some ob servations on theplace of islam in the official construction and articulation ofTurkish national identity. It vvill be argued that islam plays apivotal role in constituting Turkish national identity. As vvell asstrongly informing T urkish national identity, islam has also

gradually and, at times, grudgingly, been accommodated vvithin theoff ic ia l boundar ies of Turkish na t ion al i sm . 1 0 By analyzing therelationship betvveen islam and Turkish national identity andnationalism, vve vvould also be able to better assess the so-calledIslamist challenge in Turkey. T he rise of Islamism in Turkeyduring the 1980s and 1990s has been vvidely vievved as the primarythreat to the prevailing official conccption of Turkish nationalidentity. According to many observers it lies at the heart ofTurkey's identity crisis.1 1 Such an analysis often implicitly po sits adichotomous and essentially adversarial relationship betvveen9Seyfi Tahan, "Turkey and the West", Foreign Policy (Ankara), Vol. VII,

No. 1-2, 1978, p. 7; Mmtaz Soysal, "Discussion on 'Turkey betvveenEurope and the Middle East'", Foreign Policy (Ankara), Vol. VIII, No. 3-4,1980, p. 27.1 0 In the vvords of Hugh Poulton, "Since Atatrk's time, Turkey has evolvedinto more of a Snni state, where Snni islam is seen by many as anessential component of 'Turkishness'". Hugh Poulton, Top Hat, GreyWolf and Crescent: Turkish Nationalism and the Turkish Republic,London, Hurst & Co 1997, p. 283.1 1 W a x m a n , Turkey's identity Crises, p. 16.


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200 0] ISLAM AND TURKSH NATON AL DENTTY 5secular Kemalist nationalism and islam. The project of Kem alistnation-building is seen as antithetical to islam, and the fortunes ofboth are tied up in a "zero-sum game", whereby the success ofKem alist nationalism entails the diminution of islam , and viceversa. Such a characterization, however, greatly over-simplifies therelationship betvveen Kemalist nationalism and islam. It is thecontention of this article that the process that has been occurringhas not s imply been one of the r ise of Is lamism and theconc om itant decline of Kem alist nationalism . Rather, it is a dualprocess involving the Islamization of Turkish nationalism, and thenationalization of islam , or in the words of Turkish scholar B lentAras, the "co nstruction of a Turkish style of islam and theIslamization of the Turkish nat ionalist id eo log y" . 1 2 The 1980sonly m arked the escalation of this process, which w as in factunderway from the very beginning of the Turkish R epublic.

2 . Scholar ly Trea tm ent of the Cons t ruc t ion of TurkishNational IdentityMost scholars analyze the development of Turkish national

identity within the broader rubric of Turkish modernization, layingtheir emph asis upon formal, legislative reforms initiated by the so-called "state elite". There exists an overwhelming consensusamongst scholars of modern Turkey that Turkish modernizationand nation-building has largely been top-down, state-led, andelitist. Hence, its characterization as a "project" rather than a"process", the latter implying a societally-generated movement. 1 31 2 Blent Aras and Kemal Kirii, "Four Questions on Recent TurkishPolitics and Forcign Policy", Middle East Review of International Affairs,Vol. 2, No. 1, March 1998. Similarly, Yavuz, Turkish Identity an dForeign Policy in Flux, p. 30, writes that: "islam has been reinterpretedand reincorporatcd gradually and subtly into official Turkish nationalism.This process can be seen as an Islamization of Turkish nationalism, butalso as the Turkification of the Islamic tradition".1 3 I n the words of Aye Kadolu, "The process of Enlightenment in theWest became a project in the context of Turkish modernization". AyeKadolu, "Republican Epistemology and Islamic Discourses in Turkey inthe 1990s", The Mslim World, Vol. LXXXVIII, No. 1, January 1998, p.6. Similarly, alar Keyder distinguishes betvveen "modernization-from-above" and "m odernization as a self-generating societal process".


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6 THE TURKISH YEARBOOK [VOL. XXXThe "motor" for Turkish m odernization, it is agreed, has been thestate and its narrow governing clique. 1 4

By extension, the state elite are seen as the architects ofTurkish nat ional identi ty. As Hakan Yavuz vvri tes: "Thedetermination of national identity, in particular after 1925, wasmade strictly at the level of the statist Repub lican elite andpointedly excluded the mass of socie ty" . 1 5 Similarly, alarKeyder states that: "Turkish nationalism is an extreme example of asituation in which the masses remained silent partners and themodernizing el i te did not at tcmpt to accommodate popularsentiment.. .The masses in Turkey generally remained passiverecipients of the nationalist message propounded by the el it es " 1 6 .The outcome of the "silence of the m asses" in articulatingTurkish national identity is that it is regarded as a purely alien andartificial construct. "The question of national identity [in T urkey]",

According to Keyder, the difference is that in the case of the former, themodernizers are agents who wield state power and maintain their interests.alar Keyder, "W hither the Project of Modernity? Turkey in the 1990s",in Sibel Bozdoan and Reat Kasaba (eds.), Rethinking Modernity an dNational identity in Turkey, Seatle, University of Washington Press,1997, p. 39.14Employing Ellen Trimberger's thesis concerning the autonomy ofrevolulionary groups and its relationship to modernization projects (see"Revolution from Above: Military Bureaucrats and Development inEgypt, Peru, Turkey, and Japan," New Brunswick, New Jersey,Transaction Books, 1977), Keyder, ibid., argues that due to the Ottomanstate tradition, the absence of large landovvners, and the liquidation of thedomestic bourgeoisie (due to the Young Turks' vvartime economicnationalization policies, the War of Indcpcndence, and the expulsion of theChristian minorities from Turkey upon independence), the newbureaucratic state elite enjoyed a large degree of autonomy and faced littledomestic opposition. Moreover, the new native bourgeoisie that didemerge was beholden to the bureaucratic elite and the statist economicpolicie s from vvhich it had been created (i.e. "Na tionalistdevelopmentalism" - etatism in the intervvar years and the import-substitution policy after World War Two).15Yavuz, Turkish identity and Foreign Policy in Flux, p. 25.16 Keyder, Whither the Project of Modernity, p. 43, in fact identifies the gapbetween the modernizing elites and the "silent masses" as the central axisof modern Turkish history.


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20 00 ] ISLAM AND TURKISH NATIONAL EDENTTY 7writes Aye Kadolu, "was hardly posed as 'Who are the Turks?',but rather as "Who and/or how are the Turks going to be?'. Thelatter question was clearly more prevalent throughout Turkishhistory indicating the m anufactured character of the R epublicanTurkish identi ty".1 7 According to this argument, the manufacturedand artifcial character of Turkish national identity accounts for itsfailure to firmly take root within large sections of Turkish society.Thu s, Turkey's supposed identity crisis stems from the man ner inwhich Turkish national identity was constructed. The Republicanstate elite's condescending and insensitive stance towards popularidentifcations and sentiment is held to be responsible for theidentity crisis that has continued to afflict Turk ey. "Rep ublicanTurkish identity" was too narrowly-based, too synthetic, toosuperficial, to provide a viable and sustainable national identity forthe citizens of the new Turkish rep ubl ic. 1 8

This argument however should not be carried too far.Although the state elite have consistcntly been the primary agentsin the construction of Turkish national identity, they h avenone theless had to pay attention to the characteristics of theRepublic's population. Turkish national identity, like ali nationalidentities, could not be constructed cntircly in a vacuum, so tospeak, w hatever the vvishes of the state elite might have b een. TheTurkish state elite necessarily had to fashion the new Turkishnational identity in relation to their society. Of course, this does notmean that they willingly accommodatcd the needs and aspirationsof Turkish society in ali its diversity. Q uite the contrary, the ir self-declared m ission was to revolutionize the society for the good of1 7 A y e Kadolu, "The Paradox of Turkish N ationalism and theConstruction of Official identity", in Sylvia Kedourie (ed.), Turkey:identity, Democracy, Politics, London, Frank Cass, 1998, p. 177.1 8 AS Keyder, Whilher the Project of Modernity?, p. 45, writes: "The main

problem vvith Turkish nationalist historiography was that it did not resultfrom a negotiation betwccn vvhat the nationalist elites were trying toachieve and what could have motivated the masses to participate, nor did itcome to terms with the events that loomed largest in the experience of theparticipants", i.e. the expulsion and exchange of the Greek and Armeniansubjects of the empire. "Thus it became possible for the nationalist elitesto treat the construction of history and national identity in an entirelyinstrumental fashion; the version they eventually settled on was woefullydeficient in its accommodation of popular elements."


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8 THE TURKISH YEARBOOK [VOL. XXXthe people. Yet they did not trust Turkish society to take part in itsown revolution. Instead they favored a paternalistic state, in whichauthoritarianism was exercised in the name of future democracy."The function of the Kemalist state was not that of an arbiterbetvveen conflicting classes and othe r social groups; its mainfunction was to formulate and implement 'correct ' poli t icaldecisions for the benefit of the nation as a whole". 1 9

The state was thus endowed with the task of protecting theenvisaged ideal "civilized" nation against the encroachments andassertions of the "barbarians" within. "The Republican state w hichfostered a Jacobin men tality, led to the creation of an official,monolithic, absolute Turkish identity either by suppressing or byignoring the multiple identities that came to be imprisoned in thep e r i p h e r y " .2 0 But these m ultiple identities refused to go away, thereal people could not be banishcd and the state elite has beencontinually confronted with popular reaction, forcing them tomake accommodations to democratic and cultural aspirations.Turkish national identity is an outcome of these accom moda tions,a product of the perpetual ne gotiation s betvveen the state andsociety. This is most clearly apparent vvhen one looks at Islam'srole in the construction and articulation of Turkish nationalidentity.

3 . Kemal is t Nat ional i sm, i s lam and Turkish Nat ionalidentityIn the eyes of many observers of the Turkish Republic, bothpast and present, Kemalism vvas hostile to islam and sought toreplace the religious identification hitherto prevalent am ongst theTurk ish po pulation vvilh a national iden tification. Perce iving isla mas a reactionary and potentially th reatening force vvhich couldobstruct the modernization and nation-building building theyenvisaged for the nevv Turkish Repub lic, the Kemalists allegedlysought to banish islam from the public sphere and displace it in theprivate sphere through an at taehment to secular Turkishnationalism. The nevv Turkish national identity they sought to

Aral, Turkey's Insecure identity, p. 80.2 0K ad o lu , The Paradox of Turkish Nationalism, p. 192.


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instill was to be thoroughly m odern, free of any archaic religiouscomp onents. The official Kemalist conception of the nation wasclearly expressed by Recep Peker, the secretary of the RPP, at auniversity conference in 1931:We consider as ours ali those of our citizens who live among us, whobelong politically and socially to the Turkish nation and amongwhom ideas and feelings such as 'Kurdism,' 'Circassianism' and even'Lazism' and "Pomakism' have been implanted. We deem it our duty tobanish, by sincere efforts, those false conceptions, which are thelegacy of an absolutist regime and the product of long-standinghistorical oppression. The scientific truth of today does not allow anindependent existence for a nation of several hundrcd thousand, or evenof a million individuals...We want to state just as sincerely ouropinion regarding our Jewish or Christian compatriots. Our partyconsiders these compatriots as absolutely Turkish insofar as theybelong to our community of language and ide al. 21Despite this official rhctoric, ho wever, it was not really thecase that Kemalist nationalism was free of religious com pone nts.Wh ilst the Kem alists eliminated islam from their official definitionof the nation, in practice, influenced by the ideas of Ziya G kalp

and other pre-war Ottoman intellectuals, they elaborated a kind of"Turkified islam" w hich they hoped would strengthen Tu rkishnational identi ty.2 2Throughout the Republic's history, Kemalist nationalism hasmaintained a complex and dynamic strategic relationship withislam. D uring the War of Indcpcndence between 1919-1922, theKemalist elite used Islamic discourse to bolster its popularlegitim acy and unify the local Anatolian notables, religious leade rs,and peasantry. F or example, the founding charters of the TurkishRepu blic and the declarations of the conferences in Erzurum (July1919) and Sivas (Septem ber 1919), rcferred to those "M uslims wh oform one nation" or to "ali Islamic elements of the p opulation",whilst the "Turkish nation" was hardly mcntioned . Thereafter, in

21Q uo ted in Paul Dumont, "The Origins of Kemalist Ideology", in Jacob M.Landau (cd.), Atatrk and the Modernization of Turkey, Boulder, Co.,Westview Press, 1984, ch.3, p. 29.2 2 Ibid p. 30.


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constructing Turkish national identity, the Kemalists incorporatedIslamic elements creating a nationalized islam. 2 3The fact that islam informed Turkish national identity evenduring the heyday of Kemalism (1923-1950) is revealed inRepublican regulations concerning immigration and naturalizationwhich reflected the close association between islam and Repu blicannational identity. Article 4 of the Law of Settlement, for instance,stated that "only those who belong to Turkish ethnicity andculture" would be permitted to settle permanently in Turkey. Thegovernment regarded Albanians, Bosnians, Torbes, Pomaks, andMontenegrian Muslims as culturally "Turks" and helped them re-settle in Turkey. By contrast, the Gagauz Turks of Mo ldovo, whohad converted to Orthodox Christianity, were not considered to beculturally T urkish. As Ali Haydar, a promincnt exponent of secularTurkish nationalism, wrote in 1926, "it is impossible to make non-Muslims sincerc Turkish citizens". 2 4Perhaps the clearest indication of Islam's role in constitutingTurkish national identity was the massive "population exchange"between Tu rkey and Greece carried out from 1923 to 1930

involving almost two million people. Religion, rather than ethnicityor language , was the critcrion for differentiating popu lations andhence determining their future nationality. "What took place",writes Bernard Lew is, "was not an exchange of Greeks and Turks,but rather an exchange of Greek Orthodox C hristians and O ttomanMu slims. A W estern observcr, accustomed to a different system ofsocial and national classification, might even conclude that this wasno repatriation at ali, but two deportations into exile of ChristianTurks to Greece, and of Mslim G reeks to Tu rk ey ". 2 5 Thus ,according to Kemal Karpat, "A student of contcmporary Turkishculture and society is bound to conclude that the Turkish nation is2 3 I n pursuit of this aim Mustafa Kemal ordered the cali to prayer in alimosques to be in Turkish, not Arabic, and vvanted the Koran to betranslated into Turkish (funds for the latter were voted by the NationalAssembly in 1926 although the project ultimately failed). Poulton, TopHat, Grey Wolf and Crescent, p. 115.2 4 Quoted in Yavuz, Turkish identity and Foreign Policy in Flux, p. 26.25 Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, London, Oxford, NewYork, Oxford University Press, second edition, 1968, p. 355.


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20 00 ] ISLAM AND TURKISH NATIONAL EDENTTY 11in some ways an extension of the Mslim nation that emerged o utof the Mslim millet in the nineteenth cen tury ". 2 6

Non-Muslim minorities in the Republic, although accordedspecial status un der the terms of the 1923 Lausan ne Tre aty, oftenfaced discrimination and prej ud ice .2 7 The most notorious exampleof official discrimination against non-Muslim ci t izens of theRepub lic was the Capital Tax of 11 Novem ber 1942. Religion andethnicity were the criteria that determined how much tax a personhad to pay, with non-Muslims paying up to ten times as much asMuslims. Defaulters, almost ali of whom were Greeks, Jews andArmenians, were deported to labor camps where conditions wereharsh and mortality rates high. This measure came amidst a sharprise in anti-Semitic and anti-minority feeling in Turkey during thep e r i o d 1 9 4 1 - 1 9 4 3 . 2 8 "At a fundamental level, then, Turkishidentity, even during the Republican period could not escape itsr e l i g ious bas i s " . 2 9 This continued and intensified with the2 6 K em al Karpat, "The Ottoman Ethnic and Confessional Legacy in theMiddle East", in M ilton J. Esman and Itamar Rabinovich (eds.), Ethnicity,Pluralism, an d the State in the Middle East, Ithaca and London, Cornell

University Press, 1988, ch. 3, pp. 51-52.27Prejudice against non-Muslim Turks continues to this day in Turkey. Forinstance, in a study carried out in 1999, of more than 2000 respondentsfrom different regions of Turkey revealed high levels of prejudice by Turksagainst Armenians, Greeks, Jews and Gypsies. Another study found that61 percent of respondents would not want to have Christian neighbors.Cited in Nida Bikmen, National identity and Ethnic Prejudice in a TurkishSample, unpublished thesis, Boazii University, istanbul, 1999, p. 55.2 8 P o u l t o n , Top I lat , Grey Wolf and Crescent, pp. 117-119. Moreover,official anti-Semitic and anti-minority policies vvere not limited to thisshort period. During the preceding decade of the 1930s, a number of anti-Jewish measures vvere introduced and an anti-Jewish campaign wasorchestrated by the Turkish press. For example, a 1934 Law of Settlement(law 2510) regulating the distribulion and settlement of Turkey'spopulation, forced the removal of the historic Jewish communities ofEdirne and the Straits zone. These instances contradict the common claimmade by Turkish officials to Jevvish and Israeli audiences that there hasnever been anti-Semitism in the history of the Turkish Republic or itspredecessor, the Ottoman Em pire. Such instances of anti-Semitism,hovvever, pall in comparison to those occurring in continental Europe atthe time.Yavuz, Turkish identity and Foreign Policy in Flx, p. 26.


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1 2 THE TURKISH YEARBOOK [VOL. XXXestablishment of multiparty democracy after W orld War II. Turkishpoliticians, und er the pressure to compete for v otes, made furtherconcessions to the relgious masses and increasingly drew uponIslamic symbols and rhetoric in mobilizing the Turkish electorate.Thus, according to one scholar of Turkish n ationalism: "In thedecad es after 1950 , Snni islam increasingly becam e integratedinto the state nationalist ideology".3 0

The foregoing analysis, therefore, suggests that we need toradically revise the prevalent und erstanding of Turkish n ationalismas a form of secular nationalism, and the relationship betw eenTurkish nat ional identi ty and is lam. 3 1 Scholarly accounts ofmod ern Turkey frequently make references to secular Turkishnationalism and posit an antagonistic relationship between islamand Turkish nationalism and national identity. Metin Heper, forinstance, writes that: "...through the mass media, People's Houses(1932-54), flag saluting, national anthem singing, state parades andthe like, there has been a continuing and consistent socializationaimed at producing a Turkish rather than a Mslim identity". 3 2The im plication here is that the construction of a Turkish identityundermined and displaced Mslim identities, the two identitiesbeing antagonistic and thus unable to co-exist. At the root of suchpostulated antagonism lies the different comm unities to whichislam and nationalism appeal. Whereas nationalism regards thenation as the ideal form of social and political comm unity, and the3 0 P o u l t o n , Top Hat, Grey Wolfand Crescent, p. 318.3 1 W e should also revise how we understand secularism, specifically bycontextualizing and historicizing the concept. As Andrevv Davison writes:"What is secular, what may be meant by secularism and its different modesin modernity, and, consequently, in the practices, relations, andinstitutions associated with secularism are historically contested andvarious". Andrew Davison, Secularism an d Revivalism in Turkey: AHermeneutic Reconsideration, New Haven & London, Yale UniversityPress, 1998, p. 47.3 2 M eti n Heper, "Political Culture as a Dimension of Com patibility", inMetin Heper, Aye nc and Heinz Kramer (eds.), Turkey and the West:Changing Poli tica l and Cultural identities, London, Nevv York, I. B.Tauris & Co 1993, ch.l, p. 9. Heper, pp. 9-10, also cites a 1960ssurvey of vvorkers in a textile factory in izmir, in vvhich 50.3 percentansvvered "Turks" and only 37.5 percent ansvvered "Muslims" in responseto the question "How do you see yourselves?".


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20 00 ] ISLAM AND TURKISH NATO NAL DEN TTY 13

basis of political legitimacy; islam appeals to the transnationalcommunity of the Islamic faithful (the U mma) and conceives of itas the ideal form of social, political and religious com mun ity.Nationa lism confers poli t ical legi t imacy upo n the nat ionalcom mun ity, whilst islam confers political legitimacy upon therel igious community. In short , Is lam's t ransnational visioncontradicts nationalism's national vision.This argument, however, rel ies upon an "Oriental is t"understanding of is lam which presents i t as an essential lyunc han ging , s ta t ic , body of ideas and prac t ices . T hetransnation alism of islam is rooted in its doctrinal core; its hostilityto nationalism is thus a priori, inherent in its very nature. It depictsIslamic identity as singular, mo nolithic and inflexible, un able toaccommodate na t ional i s t demands and aspi ra t ions . This"Orientalist" reading of islam has been largely discredited due tothe numerous critiques leveled at it ver the years. It is notnecessary to re-hash these critiques here, suffice to say that islamand Islamic identity cannot be treated in such a simplistic andreductionist manner, instead they must be contextualized andhistoricized. As Y avuz argues, "the significance of Islamic political

consciousn ess, as a form of macro-identity, m ust be understood asa contextual, relational, and situational phenomenon".3 3 Islamicidentity, like ali identities, is fluid, flexible, and subject to con stantr e v i s i o n .3 4 It does not necessarily "crowd out" other identities,instead, Islamic identity "can function separately or provide af ramework for the negot ia tion of o ther iden t i t ie s" . 3 5 Theboundaries between Islamic identity and national and/or ethnicidentities, therefore, are not fixed but flexible. As such, Islam icidentity can often inform and promote nationalism and nationalidentity. Indeed, Islamic identity has been frequently nationalized.33Hak an M. Yavuz, "The Patterns of Political Islamic Identity: Dynamics of

National and Transnational Loyalties and identities", Central AsianSurvey, Vol. 14, No. 3, 1995, p. 342.3 4 An Islamic political identity in Turkey is far from monolithic, instead it isbeing continually contested by various actors. Yavuz states that, "Theprocess of forming an Islamic political identity has become a terrain forcompetition among many diverse Sufi orders, Islamic intellectual circles,and institutions". Yavuz, Turkish Identity and Foreign Policy in Flux, p.22.3 5 Y a v u z , The Patterns of Political Islamic Identity, p. 346.


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14 THETURKISH YEARBOOK [VOL. XXXThis is certainly the case vvith Turkish national identity. There is agreat degree of fluidity between Islamic and nationalist identities inT u r k e y . 3 6 The categories of islam and the Turkish nation are notmutu ally exclu sive, they often overlap in practice. Thus BernardLewis concluded ver thirty years ago in his now classic text, TheEmergence of Modern Turkey, "After a century of Westemization,Turkey has undergone immense changes.. .But the deepest Islamicroots of Turkish life and culture are stili alive, and the ultim ateidentity of Turk and Mslim in Turkey is stili u nc ha llen ge d" .3 7Turkish scholar Ilter Turan concurs vvith this view in his analysis ofthe role of islam in Turkey's political culture. Posing the qu estion:"Has a political community emerged in Turkey, with membersvvnose rel igious ch arac teris t ic s in no way affect theirmembership?"; he answers that whilst this is indeed the case at theofficial legal level, at the behavioral level it is not. N on-M uslims,Tura n claims, are usually referred to as "Turkish citizen s" or a"minority person", but not as a "Turk". According to Turan: "'Turk'designates an ethno-rel igious characteris t ic of the poli t icalcomm unity, an attribute which is not found among some of thecitizens, albeit very few".3 8 islam is thus a central component in thedefnition of a "Turk".

This fact has been increasingly recognized in Turkey inrecent decades. A m ajr reason for this has been the chang ingcom position of the Turkish elite, and specifically the emergence ofa more Islamically-oriented elite. This, in tum, was the result of themassive expansion of religious education in Turkey since the1970s. For instance, there were 72 imam-hatip schools in 1970,

3 6 Chris Houston, "Islamic Solutions to the Kurdish Problem: LateRendezvous or Illegitimate Shortcut?", New Perspectives on Turkey, Vol.16, Spring 1997, p. 5.3 7Bernard Levvis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, p. 424.3 8 llter Turan, "Religion and Political Culture in Turkey", in Richard Tapper(ed.), islam in Modern Turkey: Religion, Politics and Literatre in aSecular State, London and New York, I. B. Tauris & Co., 1991, ch. 2,pp. 37-38. Moreover, Turan, p. 39, claims that although only Muslimsare designated Turks, this is irrespective of their religiosity: "Ironically, anagnostic or an atheist may qualify as a 'Mslim' if he is of an 'Islamic'background".


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374 in 1980, and 389 in 1992. 3 9 By 1997, there were 561 imam-hatip schools with 492,809 students . 4 0 The vast m ajority of thegraduates of these schools did not go on to becom e imams orhatips, instead many went on to study at university. The parallelexpan sion of higher education during this time therefore producedincreasing num bers of religiously-oriented university studen ts,espe cial ly in the fields of poli t ical science and pub licadm inistration. For instance, in 1987, 40 per cent of AnkaraUnive rsity intakes for public administration departm ent w eregraduates from imam-hatip schools. By 1992, this figre h ad risento an astonishing 60 per cent. 4 1 Many of the graduates of imam-hatip schools, most of whom came from middle or lower classfamilies, thus increasing ly entered the state bureaucracy . "As aresult of the entry of these new graduates, the Turkish secular elitelost its former d ominance and coherence in political affairs".42Many also went on to attain political power as Islamists in the1980s and 1990s entering the Islamist Welfare Party (e.g. themay or of istanbul, R ecep T ayip E rdoan), as well as the officiallysecular center-right parties, the Motherland Party and the True PathP a r t y . 4 3 They also entered the ranks of business, becom ing the so-

called "An atolian tigers" of the late 1980s and 1990s, and formingon May 5 , 1990, the Association of the Independent Industrialists

3 9 Sami Zubaida, "Turkish islam and National Identity", Middle East Report,April-June, 1996, p. 13.4 0 Y a v u z , Turkish Identity an d Foreign Policy in Flux, p. 32. Of these 561schools, only 37 had been funded by the state, suggesting the effectiveretreat of the state in the crucial field of religious education. The state didhowever prevent a further 200 privately-funded imam-hatip schools fromopening.41Je re m y Salt, "Nationalism and the Rise of Mslim Sentiment in Turkey",Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 31, No. 1, January 1995, p. 19.4 2 Y a v u z , Turkish Identity and Foreign Policy in Flux, p. 32.4 3 The True Path Party and the Motherland Party both contain significantIslamist elements, including deputies in parliament. Thus it would bewrong to regard the Welfare Party as the sole political representative ofTurkey's Islamists. As Zubaida writes: "The RP, while an openly Islamistparty, does not enjoy a monopoly on islam in the political arena".Zubaida, Turkish islam and National Identity, p. 11.


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16 THE TURKISH YEARBOOK [VOL. XXXand Bus inessmen (MUSIAD). 4 4 Given the consistently dominantrole played by elites, throughout the Turkish Republic as well theOttoman Empire, the significance of this development can hardlybe overestimated. In particular, since elites have been the primaryarticulators of Turkish national identity, the diversification of theTurkish elite had a profound effect upon Turkish national identity.Th e gradual infltration of the new more Islamically-oriented eliteinto the higher echelons of government, econom y, and cultureinfluenced not only state policies, but also the articulation ofTurkish national identity. According to Yavuz: "This group ispivotal in the re-examination of the Republican legacy and in theconstruct ion of a new O ttoman-Islamic ide nti ty ". 4 5 In the post-1980 period, therefore, a new discourse em erged am ong theTurkish elite, which placed greater reference on Turkey's M slimcharacter. T he new d iscourse of the Turkish elite departed fromtheir earlier "Kemalist-secular" discourse in its emphasis upon theIslamic identity of the Turks and the significance of religiousvalues.

Turgut zal , as prime minister (1983-1991) and laterpresident (1991-1993), until his sudden death, epitomized the nevvIslamically-oriented elite vvhich emerged in Turkey during the1980s. zal was instrumental in forging many of the po litical,economic and cultural changes of the dec ad e. 4 6 zal explicitlyemp hasized islam as an integral element of Turkish nationalidentity. As he stated:4 4 T h e Association of the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen(MUSIAD) vvas started by a group of young pro-Islamic businessmen inistanbul. The organization's membership reached 400 in 1991, 1700 by1993, and 3000 in 1998. its members' companies annual revenue in 1998vvas US$2.79 billion. It thus represents an increasingly povverful pressuregroup and countervveight to the secular-minded Turkish Industrialists andBusinessmen's Association (TUSIAD). Nilfer Narl, "The Rise of theIslamist Movement in Turkey", Middle East Review of InternationalAffairs, Vol. 3, No. 3, September 1999.4 5 Y a v u z , Turkish identity and Foreign Policy in Flux, p. 32.4 6 It should be pointed out that not ali of these changes vvere good. Duringthe 1980s, as a result of zal's economic liberalization policy, theunemployment rate increased, income differentials vvidened, and the lovverclasses share of GNP signifcantly declined.


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What holds together, or rather brings together, our unity and ourcohesiveness is the fact that we are ali citizens of the TurkishRepublic. This is thefirst point. Everybody who lives in this land,everybody who was born here and everybody vvithin the boundaries ofthe Turkish Republic who is a citizen of this country is a first-classcitizen of this country with no distinction being made. Our state issecular. But what holds our nation together, what serves in a mostpowerful way in our national cohesiveness and what plays theessential role is islam.47Mo reover, zal attempted to personify the Turkish identityhe sought to promote amongst the population:...zal presented a public image of a statesman who was both adedicated Mslim and a member of the modern world, proving thatthese identities are not mutually exclusive. We might understand thisas an attempt to prove to the subjects of the Turkish Kemalist statethat there is no necessary contradiction betvveen being a Mslim and asubject of the secular republic, or between being a Mslim and havinga positive attitude tovvards modern, i.e. Westernized life.48This personal message was clearly conveyed by zal whenhe wrote in his book Turkey in Europe and Europe in Turkey:The Turk is aware that faith in itself does not affect secularism, doesnot prevent him from being rational. In everyday life, there is nodifference in this respect between a European Christian and a TurkishMslim. A synthesis has been realized betvveen the West and islam.This synthesis has ended the identity crisis of the Turk. I am abeliever and open to ali kinds of innovations. Not having a problemof identity, I feel no need to defend my ovvn culture, nor to attachmyself to an ideology or an extremist nationalism .49

47Quoted in Milliyet, 30 January 1989.4 8G nte r Seufert and Petra Weyland, "National Events and the Struggle forthe Fixity of Meaning: A Comparison of the Symbolic Dimensions of theFuneral Services for Atatrk and zal", New Perspectives on Turkey, Fail1994, Vol. 11, p. 95.4 9Turgut zal, Turkey in Europe and Europe in Turkey. Quoted in Nicoleand Hugh Pope, Tur key U n ve iled: A His to ry o f M odern Tu rkey ,Woodstock and New York, The Overlook Press, 1997, pp. 170-171.


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18 THE TURKISH YEARBOOK [VOL. XXXThe increased emphasis upon islam as a central componentof Turkish national identity, hovvever, was not solely the product ofTurgut zal or the new Islamically-oriented elite of which he was amem ber. In fact, it was initially advanced in the beginning of the1980s by that supposed bastion of K emalist secularism, the Turkishmilitary. In the wake of the September 1980 military coup, whichbrought to an end a decade of ideological polarization and risingpolitical violence, the military junta advocated what was termed the

"Turkish-Islamic synthesis", which aimed at synthesizing islam andTurkish nationalism, and promoting a "state-centered Turkish-Islamic consciousness".5 0 As Yavuz argues, "Through Islamizationof society, the coup leaders sought to engineer a new form ofdepol i t ic ized Turkish- Is lamic cul ture tha t would reuni fysocie ty . . . " .5 1 The "Turkish-Islamic synthesis" was frst formulatedin the early 1970s by a group of right-wing Turkish intellectualswho were mem bers of The Hearth of the Enlightened {AydnlarOca) organization formed on 14 May 19 70 . 5 2 Concerned aboutthe spread of lef t-wing ideologies in Turkey, especial ly inuniversities, they sought to counteract this trend by strengtheningr ight -wing na t ional i sm.5 3 Since Turkey was an overwhelminglyMslim country, they believed that this could be accomplishedthrough reasserting the role of islam in the secular TurkishRepublic, and fusing it with Turkish nationalism. The synthesis"aimed at an authoritarian but not an Islamic state where religionwas seen as the essence of culture and social con trol, and shouldthus be fostered in the education system but not p oli tic ize d" . 5 4This aim was later adopted by the leaders of the 1980 m ilitarycoup. In order to propagate the "Turkish-Islamic synthesis", theyappointed leading mem bers of The Hearth of the Enlightened tokey positions in the state's cultural and educational establishment5 0Hakan M. Yavuz, "Political islam and the Welfare {Refah) Party inTurkey", Comparative Politics, Vol. 30, No. 1, October 1997, p. 68.5 1Ibid., p. 68.5 2 This organization was itself an extension of The Club of the Enlightenedestablished by right-wing intellectuals in May 1962 in the more liberalclimate following the 1960 coup. See Poulton, Top Hat, Grey Wolf andCrescent, pp. 179-181.5 3T hey vvere thus natural supporters of Alparslan Trke's Nationalist ActionParty (MHP) and its brand of right-wing nationalism. Ibid., p. 180.5 4 Ibid., p. 184.


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(such as in the Turkish Radio and Television authority - TRT, theBoard of Higher Education Council and the Education Ministry).Reacting to the penetrat ion of M am sm in universitycampuses through the 1960s and 1970s, and the growth ofreligious education outside the state's control, education was theprimary sphere in which the "Turkish-Islamic synthesis" vvase x p o u n d e d .5 5 In a report prepared for the m ilitary regime in 1983,the State Planning Organization suggested the reintegration ofIslamic values into public education in order to strengthen nationalu n i t y . 5 6 Turkey's m il itary rulcrs , therefore, made rel igiouseducation compulsory in elementary and secondary schools ,enshrinin g it in the nevv Turkish constitution of 1 98 2. 5 7 Byactively promo ting the study of islam in the educational system ,the military regime aimed to ensure state control ver Islamicedu cation . In this vvay, Turkish youth vvould learn "official islam "rather than the "reactionary", "fundamentalist" varicty. M orcover, inan effort to coun ter the numerous social, economic, political andethnic divisions that appeared during the 1960s and 1970s,"official islam" stressed islam as the common den ominator amongthe various groups in the Turkish nation. Thus, it vvas the state elite

and state policy that helped bring about the shift of emphasis u ponislam as a central eleme nt of Turkish national identity. As such,"the recognition of islam as an important part of national T urkishideology has plantcd the seeds for further Islam isation ".5 85 5 For an outline of the educational syllabus introduced by the militaryregime sce Ibid., pp. 182-184.5 6 Y a v u z , Turkish identity and Foreign Policy in Flux, p. 29.57 According to Article 24, education in religion "shall be conducted understate supervision and control. Instruction in religious culture and moraleducation shall be compulsory in the curricula of primary and secondaryschools. No one shall be allovved to exploit or abuse religion or religiousfeelings, or things held sacred by religion in any manner vvhatsoever, forthe purpose of personal or political infiuence or even for partially basingthe fundamental social, economic, political and legal order of the State onreligious tenets". Quoted in Salt, Nationalism and the Rise of MslimSentiment in Turkey, p. 16.5 8Hakan M. Yavuz, "Turkey's 'Imagined Encmies': Kurds and Islamists",The World Today, Vol. 52, No. 4, April 1996, p. 99. Yavuz also vvritesthat: "In effect, the military laid the seeds for the rise of Refah". SeeYavuz, Turkish identity and Foreign Policy in Flux, p. 32.


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The rise of political islam in Turkey through the 1980s and1990s, therefore, does not necessarily signal the dem ie of Turkishnationalism or the crisis of Turkish national identity. If anything, ittestifes to the resilience of nationalism in Turkey in the face ofsevere social, economic, and political strains. The "nation" as theappropriate basis upon which to establish a political community isnow widely accepted in Turkish society. In this sense, Turkishnationalism has been successful in inculcating the nation as theprincipal locus of collective political id entification. 5 9 At the sametime, Snni islam has becom e an important component of Turkishn a t i o n a l i s m . 6 0 It is for this reason that, "probably a majority ofTurks do not perceive a contradiction betvveen islam and theirattachment to Kemalist symbols, viewing both as integral tonational identity".6 1 Even those Turks who have supported politicalislam in Turkey, in the form of the National Salvation Party, and itssuccessors the W elfare Party and the Virtue Party, no doubt adhereto the values of Turkish nationalism. Th us, according to onesurvey, 41 per cent of W elfare Party voters described themselves inKemalist terms as laik (secular), and regarded Atatrk as thegreatest man of ali t ime, even before the Prophet M uh am m ad .6 2Indeed, even the forcmost spokesman of political islam in Tu rkey,Necmettin Erbakan, could be regarded as Turkish nationalist. Inhis political speeches, Erbakan rcgularly stressed the notions of"national unity" and a "powerful state wilh religious soc iet y" .6 3 Theelec t ion mani fes tos of Erbakan 's Nat ional Sa lva t ion Par tyfrequently assertcd that the party defended Turk ey's nationalinterests and represented the "national view". 6 4 Thus, one Turkish5 9 T u r a n , Religion and Political Culture in Turkey, p. 38.6 0 P ou l ton , Top Hat, G rey W o lf an d Crescent, pp. 204-205.6 1 Zuba ida , Turkish islam and National Identity, p. 10.6 2Cited in ibid., p. 10.6 3 Y a v u z , Political islam and the Welfare (Refah) Party in Turkey, p. 76.6 4 F o r example, in its 1973 general elcction party platform, the NSPdeclared: "[The] NSP is against Turkey's participation in the CommonMarket. NSP complains to the nation that those parties vvhich had said'yes' to this union are running counter to national interests. Against suchan attempt which will degenerate our national and moral values, destroyour national industry, and cause our nation to dissolve in a cosmopolitanand common medium by violating the principle of national sovereignty in


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20 00 ] ISLAM AND TURKISH NATIONAL DEN TTY 2 1observ er at the time w rote: "...the description by the NS P of itspolicies as the 'national view' {milli gr), though doubtless to alarge extent merely lip-service to secular sentiment and laws, seemspartly to indicate the success of nationalism in do minating theTurk i sh s cene" . 6 5 Mo re recently, at the Welfare Party's FifthCon vention in 1997, Erbakan declared the party's foreign policygoal as the "creation of the Greater Turkey just as the O ttomansd i d " . 6 6 Thus, according to Zubaida, "Turkey's brand of Islamistideology challenges the secularist components and the Europeanidentfcation of Kemalism, historically the dominant form ofTurk ish nation alism, but retains the central core of Turkishnationalism and statism". 6 7 In many w ays, therefore, the discourseof Erbakan and the National Salvation Party/Welfare Party/VirtuePar ty represents the culminat ion of the process of thenationalization of islam and the Islamization of nationalism inT u r k e y . 6 8

the political field, NSP, representing the national point of view, vvillaccomplish its duty and free our nation's future from these vapid parties".In "Foreign Policy Abstracts From The 1973 Election Platforms of theTurkish Political Parties", The Turkish Yearbook of InternationalRelations, Vol. XIII, 1973, pp. 164-165.6 5 S ina Akin, "Turkish Nationalism Today", The Turkish Yearbook ofInternational Relations, Vol. XVI, 1976, pp. 22.6 Quoted in Yavuz, Turkish identity and Foreign Policy in Flux, p. 23.6 7Zuba ida , Turkish islam and National identity, p. 10.6 8 I t should be noted that Erbakan is not the leader of the Virtue Party, sincehe was banned from active politics following the closure of the W elfareParty in January 1998 by the Constitutional Court on the grounds that itviolated the principles of secularism and the law of the political parties.The Virtue Party (FP) was foundcd on December 17, 1997 by 33 formerWelfare Party deputies under the leadership of Recai Kutan. The leadershipof the Virtue Party has been describcd as "socially conservative, culturallynationalistic, free-market oriented, not anti-Western, and is seeking toreinvent a centrist image for the VP". Hakan M. Yavuz, "Search for a NewSocial Contract in Turkey: Fethullah Glen, the Virtue Party and theKurds", SAIS Review: A Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 19, No. 1,Winter-Spring 1999, p. 127.


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4. Conclusion: A Question of Emphas isDespite the persistent tensions and confl icts betweensecularists and Islamists in Turkey, the vast majority within bothcam ps share a belief that islam constitutes an essential aspect of"Turkishness". For both, to be a Turk basically means being aMslim. Given this underlying broad consensus concerning theIslamic com ponent of Turkish national identity, does this meanthat we should dismiss ali the talk about an identity debate inTurkey as simply arising from a fundamental misunderstandingabout the nature of Turkish nationalism and national identity? Th iswould be a hasty conclusion. Instead, we must reformulate thenature of the identity debate betvveen Islamists and secularists inTurk ey. It is often crudely portrayed as involving a co mpe titionbetvveen Turkish national identity and Islamic identity. This articlehas disputed this simplistic dichotomy, pointing to the coexistenceand co-ming ling of the two idcntities. Rather, the debate concernsthe relative salience of islam within Turkish national identity andthe political implications that follow from this. Islamists prioritize

islam within their conception of Turkish national identity, andargue that the primarily Islamic nature of Turkish identity shouldbe given concrete political and social expression. For secularists, onthe other hand, islam is an important, but by no means, exclusivesource of Turkish national identity. islam is just one elementamongst others that informs Turkish n ational identity, and it is notnecessarily the most important; many secularists would no doubtprefer to emphasize the European element in Turkish nationalidentity. Moreover, secularists argue that the Islamic element ofTurkish identity should be expressed within the private rather thanthe public sphere.In short, the identity debate betvveen Islamists and secularistsundervvay in Turkey is about the importance, not the existence, ofislam in shaping Turkish national identity, and the policyimp lications of this. As such, it is essentially a question ofemphasis; a question perhaps less dramatic, but certainly no lessconsequential for the future of Turkey and its citizens.

islam and turkish national identity

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