The history of the Islamist debate in Turkey dates back to the late 19th Century during which period the Ottoman Empire was in clear decline while western Europe was advancing further into the realms of technological and industrial superiority. As observed in the Russian and Chinese cases of the same period, Turkish political and religious figures embarked on an almost desperate soul-searching assignment with the ambition of discovering the illusive mechanism by which the waning state and society of the empire could be recovered. This was not a premiering debate, however, but was one that had harassed the minds of Turkish statesmen and intellectuals since the 17th Century when Ottoman advances into Europe had all but ceased.

By the late 1800’s the debate had become one of bipolarisation: ‘Westernise’ vs. ‘Islamise.’
The Westernisers advocated the adoption of western technology and approaches to industry as well as the institutional structure of western states. The Islamists on the other hand shared the view that western technology and industrialisation was inevitably essential for the regeneration of the Ottoman state, but argued clearly against the restructuring of the institutional nature of the Turkish empire along western lines.

Islamic society, in the eyes of the Islamists, had already established its value and had catalysed some of the greatest empires and political ideologies witnessed over the preceding millennium and a half – why abandon it? The Islamists failed to win the debate despite their own convictions and the Republican theme which became engrained in the official ideology defining ‘civilized’ society in the Turkish statesman’s understanding (Toprak, 1999), won the moment.

The Ottoman state’s involvement in the First World War was perhaps the final lunge of the dying empire, seeking to reignite the fuse which would lead to its resurgence. It failed and with the military defeat the empire disintegrated. The Arab world acquired its independence from the Turkish and turned to their new west European benefactors in fashioning their future states and the condition of the region. Turkey became an isolated republic that neither sought to build a new dynamic with its regional neighbours or retain its hostile stance towards the western powers. It needed a new identity in order to pursue its ambitions and impose its sovereignty. The Islamists faired worse than their ideological opponents who saw the nation’s defeat at the hands of western military superiority as clear evidence of the Ottomanist doctrine’s (which was helplessly linked to the Islamist ideology which had its roots in the empire’s own foundations) failure. Under the dynamic leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), the Turkish state re-emerged first as an ideological nationalism forged in the struggles of the Turkish National Movement (led by Ataturk) and then as the Republic of Turkey formed in 1923 – hailed by the westernising nationalists as modern, ambitious, capable and a secular civilization. The ‘Kemalist’ ideology prevailed over the course of the 20th Century at the expense of the Islamists. The Kemalist ambition was to “attain the standards of contemporary civilisation,” which they believed lay on a path of homogenous secularisation (Constitutional Court of Turkey, 2006).

As the first President of the Republic, Ataturk initiated and oversaw initial reforms that were designed to replace the Ottoman Islamic civilization with the western counterpart. The policy of laicism adopted by the Kemalists followed the French model closely, which was more aggressive in its objection to any state-religion linkage. As in France, any politician or military officer who allowed himself to be publicly religious was prevented from becoming a cabinet member or acquiring promotion within the armed forces by clear and resolute legislation. The Islamists were unable to progress within government or the political system and the nature of the state’s objections to them eventually became transposed onto the public sphere. During the era of one-party rule (1923-1946) the Islamists remained either underground or had formed conservative factions in centre-right parties (Narli, 1999). It would have been, and still is, unthinkable for the Turkish lira to bear the “In God we trust” declaration of the US dollar, for instance. Laicism was the greatest challenge to the Islamist movement and its natural development, though it is debatable as to whether state or public laicism formed the most obstructive component of this opposition throughout the 20th Century. A study conducted by the Department of Political Science at the Bosporus University in Istanbul in 1999 revealed that 67% of respondents did not approve of religious involvement in the political theatre, while only 13% did. 61% agreed that political parties based on religious doctrine should be banned from the political system, though on the issue of closing the Refah Party (the primary Islamist party in Turkey from the early 1980-1990’s) a lower figure of 37% stated that they would approve of the party’s devolvement. 77% of respondents felt that republican reforms since the 1920’s had led to progress while only 10% favoured a return to elements of Shariah-based legal practice (DPS, 1999).

Until the 1970’s the Turkish political spectrum effectively pitted right against left wing parties within the context of the inter-war and Second World War European political landscape and then later in the framework of the Cold War. The Islamists had been marginal since the establishment of the Republic and had not had any significant political presence until the founding of the first two Islamist parties at the outset of the 1970’s – Milli Nizam Partisi (National Order Party, MNP) and Milli Selamet Partisi (National Salvation Party, MSP). Both parties were found unconstitutional by the Constitutional Courts in the 1970’s and banned from political activity. But the political ban was not the end of the Islamist return to the political fold. The leadership of the MNP and MSP founded the Refah Party (Welfare Party, RP) in 1983 with virtually the same manifesto and agenda. Refah under the leadership of Necmettin Erbakan was tolerated at times throughout the 1980’s while at others the party was clamped down upon by the military and pressed out of the political system much as Erbakan had been tolerated in the previous decade (Erbakan guided his Islamist party into a number of right-led coalitions throughout the 1970-1980 period).
The fluctuations between tolerance and objection of the Islamist party movement during the 1980’s had yet to assert any conviction in either direction. Even the military guardians of the Kemalist laicism began to reflect upon a synthesised ideology linking republicanism with parts of the Islamist doctrine – often referred to as the ‘Turkish-Islamist Synthesis.’ This approach had been advocated by the Nationalist Action Party (representing the far right nationalist wing), and had been documented by the State Planning Organisation in a 1983 document to postulate three fundamental pillars – the family, the mosque, and the barracks. This unfamiliar espousing did not last and the state system did eventually close its door on the Islamists once more by the early 1990’s but the Turkish-Islamist synthesis had been able to instigate itself within the formal political arena by then. By 1991, the re-orientation of the Turkish economy from the import substitution of the 1960’s and 1970’s to a market economy, the rural to urban shift (60:40 pre-1980; 40:60 post-1980) and the collapse of the Soviet Union debilitated the liberal socialist left that had traditionally been awarded the votes of the urban poor. The conservative right, however, could not capitalise on the disabilities of its traditional opponents on the left due to the economic costs of the reform policies it was held responsible for implementing. Disillusionment, worsening economic stagnation and a lack of ideological alignment by the early 1990’s led the electorate towards the only viable alternative – the Islamists. The closure of one Islamist party (including the prominent Refah Party) simply led to the emergence of another led by the same figures with the same political message. With the legal isolation of the Refah Party, and the Virtue Party that emerged from its immediate demise, the Islamists organised themselves behind Recep Tayyip Erdogan under the name of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and won a major electoral victory in 2002. The Islamists had returned to the forefront of Turkish politics.

Civil Society and the Islamists
As the Islamists made headway into established and emerging elite circles, the Kemalists of the Republican camp responded to the Islamist development and success with restrictions and bans that brought and end to the Islamist-led coalition in 1996. Utilising traditional tactics proved, however, to be insufficient in curtailing the contemporary Islamist movement. The Kemalist elites and the military guardians that maintained their power through so much of the Republic’s maturation had spent many decades on a trajectory that gradually alienated the identity that they ultimately sought to secure. By attempting to create an ethnically and religiously homogenous yet secular society, the Kemalist state had marginalised social identities that have since found representation amongst the Islamists. Civil society, which had never been favoured by the reserved Kemalists interested in controlling the nature of the state by controlling governments and politicians, was the forum in which the Islamists and the public sphere met. In a retaliation to unpopular constitutional arrangements and military interventions (three military coups by the mid-1990’s) and top-down modernization that failed to address the economic and social costs to the growing urban population, civil society in Turkey has hit back in a process often hailed as the confirmation of democratic consolidation in the country. However, celebrations of the civil society-Islamists union are premature as the necessary step between civil society and state through political society has been largely ignored (Gurbey, 2006) since 2002.

During the Ottoman era, the state enforced its aspirations of an ethnically, religiously, linguistically and politically homogeneous society by repressing the development and conduct of economic and political groups that could otherwise operate independently from the state. The same bureaucratic structures that the Ottoman state utilised for the purposes of oppressing non-state actors was inherited by the Republic of Turkey, which did not reform them as it passionately did other institutions. The Kemalists proceeded to employ these institutions to repress civil society during the secularisation project which “paved the way to a dialectical choreography that negated itself by generating its own rival” in the form of the subtle ‘Islamist revolution’ of the 1990’s (Kadooglu, 2005).

In the era of social transformation of the urban centres (1960-1980’s) the Islamist movement discovered a prominent role for itself in the civil society vacuum that proved beyond the Kemalist capacity to prevent. In the provincial towns and rural communities Islamist supporters had effectively been politically stagnant and had very little opportunity to extend any politicised influence beyond their immediate communities – which were peripheral to the state’s control system in any case. Urbanisation of these populations provided them with formal opportunities in education and professional advancement that resulted in considerable upward social mobility. These aspiring groups utilised the opportunistic nature of urban society and rapidly addressed social and economic needs of those hardest hit by the republican reforms of the economy rampant at the time. The Islamists developed in this period in many roles in which they gained influence previously unavailable to the aging old-guard of Kemalists. It was within these professions that guilds and unions were established that provided invaluable resources and support to aspiring members of the same professions and in so doing the Islamists won a great deal of favour with the urban population and recruited many ambitious and qualified individuals into their ranks. University alumnus provided scholarships, accommodation and graduate opportunities for university students; merchants’ guilds provided Islamic finance credit to small businesses and industrialists; women’s groups increasingly sponsored women’s issues and developed cooperatives to address their concerns (though primarily within parameters that did not overstep conservative traditions); and financial assistance for absent state infrastructure such as schools and medical care was delivered by the growing Islamist business elite.
Turkish civil society had been restrained by the republican system much as the Islamist movement had been, although by different structural and legal reforms. By the late 1980’s both the Islamist movement and Turkish civil society had begun to politically elaborate on their mutual relationship – the expansionary space of civil society granting the Islamists a mechanism by which they could garner a political role and the Islamists acting as the energetic dimension needed to transform what had for decades been a docile public sphere into an active force capable of countering the state system. This was, however, still to remain a difficult time for both the Islamists and civil society in Turkey due to the Kemalist’s paradoxical attitude towards religious participation in their laicist state. Kemalists, challenged by the apparent encroachment of religion on their secular republic found what they believed to be an answer by returning to Ataturk’s legacy and reinterpreting the elements of its doctrine addressing the notion of nationalism. Here they found a need as well as the historic precedence of the Kemalist doctrine in defining not only what it meant to be a Turk but also what it meant to be a Muslim – which was inevitably linked to the Turkish identity. The state initiated compulsory religious education in an attempt to recapture the initiative on the issue of Islamic identity and how it manifested politically in the republic’s secular system (Gurbey, 2006).

Ironically, the efforts of the military-preserved Kemalist ideology during the 1980’s which were aimed at dissolving the Islamist-civil society alliance served to strengthen the relationship (Ozbudun, 2000). Although Turkish civil society triumphed in its resilience as it stepped into the 1990’s it was the bridge built by the politicised Islamist movement into the political society of parties, business elites and politicians that allowed democratic consolidation to gain an extra foothold. Under Erbakan Islamist groups had been organised around a single political party recurrently – under different names assigned to each party that succeeded its banned predecessor. In 1995, the Welfare party won the national elections creating greater tension between the secular elite and the government. The party and Erbakan were consequently banned from political activity for five years in 1997 by the constitutional courts that argued democracy was being jeopardised by the Islamist agenda.

In continuation of the Islamist habit of political adjustment and re-emergence, the Virtue Party (FP) emerged bearing the same political message and line-up. In 1999, however, before much ground could be regained on the electoral platform that was three years off, the constitutional courts found it also to be unconstitutional and disbanded the party. This juncture marked the first split within the Islamist camp since it had emerged in the post-single party era. Traditionalists who intended to continue Erbakan’s line of conservative political reform formed the Felicity Party (SP) while Islamist modernisers who had identified a need to compromise components of the Islamist identity formed the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was elected Mayor of Greater Istanbul in 1994 during the Welfare Party’s municipal election successes, led the AKP away from the traditionalist line and embarked on a course that was to achieve the most notable electoral successes on 3 November 2002 taking 34.3% of the vote and winning an overall majority in the Grand National Assembly.

‘Conservative Democracy’ and the AKP

The AKP is a unique Islamist party that does not correlate very closely to the character and nature of the ‘traditional’ Islamist parties in Egypt, Jordan, Algeria and other countries in the region with an established trend of Islamic party activity. Although, Islamist movements vary greatly among different states both in their doctrines and strategies and it is unreasonable to assume that one formula of political success can apply to all, it is possible to generate greater understanding of how Islamist movements develop towards a clear conjunction with democratic politics. The AKP is an interesting case in which Islamic democracy is advocated under the doctrine of Conservative Democracy. The party’s pursuit of a contemporary role for political Islam has seen it establish considerable popularity at the expense of the secular spectrum’s liberal left and nationalist right. Erdogan has navigated a route that appeals to the moral values of Turkish society (predominantly linked in some way to Islamic values) and demonstrates determination in the pursuit of economic prosperity on a pragmatic and modernising platform (Onis, 2006).
Although the AKP has Islamist roots it attempts to define itself as a pro-Islamist party, but not an Islamist party as understood in the guise of the traditional Islamist trend. Presentation is very important in order to remain true to the political and ideological aspirations of the party – but at the same time avoiding any negative reactions from the Kemalists and the secular elements of Turkish society, building close relations with the EU, and ensuring the progressive nature of Turkish Islamist politics. This has created some problematic conflicts within the party and has posed significant policy-orientation challenges. The AKP has struggled with its identity since its election in 2002. Compromisation within the Turkish political system has been the only route by which the AKP has been able to navigate the successful course that it has. In doing so, the party has been able to pioneer the nature of what is now considered contemporary Islamist politics in Turkey. A unique formula in terms of Islamist political manifestation has been drawn up by the AKP resulting in the modernisation/modification of Islamist ideology that has focused upon the controlled separation of state and religion to the appropriate degree (i.e. maintaining the Islamist nature, but not pushing the party to the marginalisation that the earlier Islamist parties risked). So, by expanding religious pluralism and debate as well as encouraging religious participation of a diverse nature that is fully representative of Turkish society rather than enshrining secularism, the AKP has justified the contemporary Islamist movement and demonstrated its capacity for democratic practice.
Rather than define the nature of political society the AKP has strived to narrow the representational gap between state and society – by integrating the common values of Turkish society (which is conservatively Islamic) with the state secular system. The party aims, therefore, to establish Conservative Democracy, which is its ideological manifesto. In the case of Turkey, that means Islamic Democracy much like the neo-cons of the US. (Tepe, 2005). The point here is that Islam and Democracy are seen as not being in conflict with one another. There are beliefs that religion is sacred but that religious ideas and interpretations are not, therefore, there can be pluralism in religious debate. This moderation in ideological policy has been coupled with firm convictions on foreign and economic policies that had previously been opposed by the Islamists under Erdogan. Instilling a social-entrepreneurial and properly managed market economy, increasing foreign economic links, striving to meet EU-set legal and political practice standards and adopting extroversive foreign policy orientations, has succeeded in winning favour both at home and abroad. The Islamist platform in Turkey has adapted to such an extent that there is now a growing camp of pro-entry groups within the EU that advocate Turkish membership of the ‘club’. Having increased economic growth (2002-2005 – 6.9%), driven open more democratic space in the Turkish political system and built favourable ties both regionally and internationally, the AKP is enjoying a popularity boom, and with it contemporary Islamist politics is raising much positive attention.

However, despite the AKP’s current recognition there is some caution voiced by some when considering any guarantee of ongoing electoral victories. In 2002, the AKP did win the elections in remarkable style, but there are three critical points that its leadership must identify with: 1) the increasing apathy of the Turkish Electorate (20% of those eligible to vote in 2002 did not cast ballots); 2) the restrictive nature of the Turkish electoral system which applies a 10% threshold requirement in order to gain seats, which cancels out many of the smaller parties’ votes which accounted for 40% of the votes cast in 2002; 3) the paralysis and marginalisation of the secular parties. Combined, these factors dampen the celebration of the AKP’s 2002 victory and should these same circumstances not exist in future elections the AKP’s largely unchallenged election of 2002 will not repeat itself.

There are also a number of internal issues that may become problematic for the party in coming years if left untreated. The party’s identity debate could become an identity crisis if it does not replace its current illusiveness with a resolved and declared personality which successfully combines the impartiality that the party currently enjoys with the interests of its Islamist supporters. The party may also have to face criticisms of its eagerness to enact rapid reforms and its policy of unilateralism in doing so. Although the AKP has enacted a record number of Bills (553) and swiftly reformed many institutions it faces a potential dilemma in that these reforms have been enacted with limited public debate. This demonstrates confidence and legitimacy if the public sphere supports these reforms, but should there be negative consequences or a perception of too much sacrifice – for instance, political reforms to secure EU entry or IMF-encouraged neo-liberal economic reforms – the confident conduct of the AKP could be a significant liability.
Another dilemma that may emerge to trouble the party has roots in the party’s conviction that by conducting state structural reforms, the public sphere – society – will be more flexible in exerting itself (i.e. its Islamist tendencies). This assumption is a tentative gamble as the AKP itself does not seem to be committed to leading such expressions of Islamism and therefore risks losing the electoral identification with public sentiments that saw it voted into government in 2002. This, in theory, is a very democratic method of approach – removing the secularising barriers that impose limits on Islamic political presence – but with a crowding-out of civil society how exactly is the public sphere meant to establish its Islamist nature in an organised fashion?

The headscarf issue is a key example here. The AKP, rather than tackle the issue directly by removing the Kemalist ban on headscarves in educational and various public institutions sent the matter to the European Court of Human Rights. The AKP believed that the court would devolve the legislation banning the wearing of the headscarf but instead it endorsed it under what were termed circumstantial conditions of the country’s political environment – or in other words the potential rise of radical Islamist social movements feared by European opponents of Turkish membership of the EU. This shortfall applies also to the AKP’s voiced commitment to increasing female political participation – but in 2002 only 13 of the party’s 3,184 candidates for local leadership posts were female. Of these only 1 won a seat in office.

Furthermore, the party has progressed with a de-centralisation of the state from a highly centralised system into administrative federalism but has increased the centralisation of the party structure and muscled out much of the civil society and dissenting participation that characterised the Islamist movement’s rise. This ultimately runs the risk of establishing ‘Democracy without Democrats’ (Salame, 1994).

Summary: Some brief lessons for regional Islamist democratisation

The experiences of the Islamist political movement in Turkey demonstrate a number of key messages with clarity: democratic politics can occur in a highly obstructive state system when civil society is combined with both a popular social identity and a political society to represent the public sphere within the confines of the state system; Islamic political alternatives are diverse and varied, drawing influences from unique sources of a historical and contemporary nature; Islamist political identities can express themselves as liberal democratic practices and can adapt to changing circumstances; autocratic interpretation of secularism and efforts to exclude Islamist political movements from the state system will likely result in alternative representation and growth in civil society.

By ‘inviting the Islamists in’ and providing them with a political platform from which to express their doctrine and political ambitions, the democratic state system can both shape and influence the Islamists as well as modify its own pluralistic nature by sourcing exchanges from the Islamist movement. The Islamists of Turkey have had to continuously regulate their political expressions under state and constitutional pressure but proved very robust in altering the fundamental convictions of the Islamist identity until the emergence of the AKP. This resistance, however, did not achieve any significant liberation from the cycle of political deadlock prevalent throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s. Essentially, any Islamist movement that operates within a democratic system will be compelled to undertake compromises and enhance its interaction with discourses outside of the ideological sphere it is founded upon in order to obtain a successful presence in the political society of the state. Within an authoritarian system, such compromises are not encouraged but rather discouraged or negated.

Furthermore, a strong role in an active civil society is fundamental to the fulfilment of the Islamist movement’s aspirations and in shaping these. Without a civil society the political society of an Islamist movement will lack the electoral popularity needed in order to gain seats in national assemblies and in government, while the absence of civil society itself is detrimental to the development and preservation of a democratic state.
Bibliography
The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Turkey, The Constitution of the Republic of Turkey, Ankara, Turkey

Department of Political Science, (1999), Survey on religious involvement in the Turkish political system, Bosporus University, Istanbul, Turkey

Gurbey, S., (2006), Civil Society and Islam in Turkey, Columbia University, US

Kadooglu, A., (2005), Civil Society, Islam and Democracy in Turkey, The Muslim World, Issue 95.
Narli, N., (1999), “The Rise of the Islamist Movement in Turkey,” Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol. 3 No. 3

Ozbudun, E., (2000), Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation, Lynne Reinner, Boulder, CO

Salame, G., (1994), Democracy Without Democrats: The Renewal of Politics in the Muslim World, I.B Tauris, London, UK

Tepe, S., (2005), “Islamists at the Ballot Box”, Special Report, No. 144, Washington D.C., US
Topak, B., (1999), Religion and State in Turkey, Lecture: “Contemporary Turkey: Challenges of Change,” Dayan Centre, Istanbul, Turkey

Tags: history, islam, murad h. el-anis, turkey