Int. J. Middle East Stud. 33 (2001), 433–448. Printed in the United States of America

Haldun Gulalp

G L O BA L I Z AT I O N A N D P O L I T I C A L I S L A M : T H E

S O C I A L BA S E S O F T U R K E Y ’ S W E L FA R E PA RT Y

Political Islam has gained heightened visibility in recent decades in Turkey. Largenumbers of female students have begun to demonstrate their commitment by wearingthe banned Islamic headdress on university campuses, and influential pro-Islamist TVchannels have proliferated. This paper focuses on the Welfare (Refah) Party as theforemost institutional representative of political Islam in Turkey.

The Welfare Party’s brief tenure in power as the leading coalition partner frommid-1996 to mid-1997 was the culmination of a decade of steady growth that wasaided by other Islamist organizations and institutions. These organizations and institu-tions included newspapers and publishing houses that attracted Islamist writers, nu-merous Islamic foundations, an Islamist labor-union confederation, and an Islamistbusinessmen’s association. These institutions worked in tandem with, and in supportof, Welfare as the undisputed leader and representative of political Islam in Turkey,even though they had their own particularistic goals and ideals, which often divergedfrom Welfare’s political projects. Focusing on the Welfare Party, then, allows for ananalysis of the wider social base upon which the Islamist political movement rose inTurkey. Since Welfare’s ouster from power and its eventual closure, the Islamist move-ment has been in disarray. This paper will, therefore, be confined to the Welfare Partyperiod.

Welfare’s predecessor, the National Salvation Party, was active in the 1970s butwas closed down by the military regime in 1980. Welfare was founded in 1983 andgained great popularity in the 1990s. Starting with a 4.4 percent vote in the municipalelections of 1984, the Welfare Party steadily increased its showing and multiplied itsvote nearly five times in twelve years. It alarmed Turkey’s secular establishment firstin the municipal elections of 1994, with 19 percent of all votes nationwide and themayor’s seats in both Istanbul and Ankara, then in the general elections of 1995 whenit won a plurality with 21.4 percent of the national vote. Nevertheless, the WelfareParty was only briefly able to lead a coalition government in partnership with theright-wing True Path Party of Tansu Ciller. After its removal from power under pres-sure from the armed forces, the Welfare Party was closed down by a ConstitutionalCourt ruling in early 1998 and has been replaced by the Virtue (Fazilet) Party. The

Haldun Gulalp is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, Bogazici University, Bebek 80815,Istanbul, Turkey; e-mail: gulalp@boun.edu.tr.

2001 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/01 $9.50

434 Haldun Gulalp

Virtue Party, however, has inevitably been more circumspect and appears eager todistance itself from the Welfare legacy, even though it inherited Welfare’s politicalcadres and most of its parliamentary seats. This situation has led to an alienationbetween the party and several of the institutions mentioned earlier that previouslysupported Welfare, as well as many of the Welfare Party voters.

Confounding the left–right division, Islamism as represented by Welfare relied ona multi-class political movement that articulated its themes in religious terms. Thisphenomenon should be carefully distinguished from the seemingly similar liberationtheology in Latin America. While liberation theology constitutes a novel interpretationof Christianity from a socialist perspective, Welfare’s Islamism focused on the ques-tion of cultural superiority or inferiority. Liberation theology is concerned with chang-ing the social order and, for this reason, it expresses class interests through Christianterms and uses religion to mobilize people for class-related issues.1 Turkey’s politicalIslam, by contrast, was concerned with a cultural project and attempted to mobilizepeople by addressing their class interests in order to effect that project. In other words,Welfare used class-related issues as a vehicle to promote a project of change in life-style and to establish its own version of an “Islamic” society. The question, then, is:what kinds of classes or class segments subscribed to this project?

T H E A N A LY T I C A L F R A M E WO R K

Authors who identify the center–periphery relationship as a key social cleavage inTurkey have focused on “status”-related factors, such as lifestyles, culture, and ideol-ogy. They have observed that in modern Turkey, Kemalism has represented the cen-ter—hence, those who have been distant or opposed to the Kemalist state have suf-fered political, economic, and ideological exclusion and peripheralization.2 Rightlycritical of modernization theory, which characterizes Islamism as a backward ideologythat is doomed to extinction, this perspective presents political Islam as a movementof the “counter-elites” who are aiming for upward mobility in opposition to the secu-larist social actors privileged by their proximity to the Kemalist state and ideology.According to this perspective, “it is in this realm of ‘habitus’, cultural codes andlifestyles that the power struggle between Republican elites and Islamists is takingplace.”3

It is true that Welfare successfully billed itself as the party of the “periphery”against the “center,” the party of “civil society” against the “state.”4 But this thesis isincomplete in two respects. First, the center–periphery perspective ignores the histori-cal specificity of the current conjuncture. This cleavage, and consequent conflict, havetheir origins in the Ottoman Empire period and have continued, under transformedconditions, during the Republican period.5 Moreover, during the Republican period,elements of Islamism have often been incorporated into the ideology and practice ofthe Kemalist state.6 What, then, has made the Islamist challenge to Kemalism soformidable in recent years?

Second, the “counter-elite” thesis focuses primarily, or even exclusively, on theprofessional middle class and university students. Thus, Nilufer Gole conceptualizesthe use of Islamist symbols, such as the headscarf, as a vehicle of upward mobility.7

But this concept primarily applies to the professional middle class in its struggle for

Globalization and Political Islam 435

an assertion of identity that represents an alternative to the currently dominant one.This paper, by contrast, focuses less on this much-studied area8 and more on othersocial classes, and attempts to place the growth of the social base of political Islamin the specific historical conjuncture of the 1980s and 1990s.

These two decades have been a period of global decline for nation-states. Modernstates, which early in the 20th century had begun to regulate their national economiesand protect the welfare of their citizens, now find their powers undermined by global-ization.9 The 20th century has thus witnessed the rise and decline of the welfare stateand, with it, the rise and decline of the community formed around it. The stage wasthus set for the emergence of alternative forms of community with competing claims toidentity, as well as for the “post-modernist” critique of modernism, the nation-state, andnationalism.10 Disenchantment with the nation-state globally has led to two seeminglyconflicting but parallel tendencies: sub-national (e.g., ethnic or tribal) separatist move-ments and supra-national (e.g., religious or civilizational) revivalist movements.

The argument of this paper is that the rise of political Islam in opposition to Kemal-ism can be linked to globalization and post-modernization (or the process of transitionto the condition of postmodernity).11 This argument rejects the modernization thesisthat religion will decline as a result of economic development and proposes, in aseemingly counter-intuitive manner, that political Islam is not necessarily opposed toglobalization. As we will see later, political Islam in Turkey has actually flourishedunder conditions of globalization.12

It must be noted, however, that Islamism promised different things to differentclasses of people. In this regard, the Welfare Party fit the classic definition of a “popu-list” movement as the mobilization of the urban poor by the minority segments of theupper and middle classes into action against the status quo.13 These different socialclasses and class segments, with identifiable albeit mutually contradictory interests,nevertheless expressed their interests in a common idiom of opposition to the Kema-list state. Their differing interests were successfully assimilated by the Islamist move-ment in a discourse of opposition to Kemalism and the demand for an Islamic lifestyle.

G L O BA L I Z AT I O N , E X P O RT O R I E N TAT I O N , A N D P O L I T I C A L I S L A M

The 1960s and 1970s were a period of economic boom in Turkey, based on import-substituting industrialization (ISI). Widely pursued in Third World modernization dur-ing much of the 20th century, ISI was a model of state-led development. It consistedof an attempt to utilize a nationalist ideology by combining the basic principles of thewelfare state with an emphasis on rapid industrialization. In practice, ISI was a processin which technology, capital goods, and inputs were imported, and the final productwas locally manufactured to cater to the state-protected domestic market.14 During theISI boom in Turkey, the Islamist opposition originated in the small independent busi-nesses that felt threatened with extinction. The creation of the first Islamist politicalparty in 1970 (the National Order Party, re-created as the National Salvation Party[NSP] after closure by the Constitutional Court) was an outcome of the conflict be-tween the ISI-based, big industrial and other business interests in urban areas and thetraditional, small to medium-size business sector in provincial towns. The constitu-

436 Haldun Gulalp

ency of the NSP mostly represented conservative followers of religious orders andthese provincial small-business people.15

Writers who predict the decline of political Islam in Turkey typically argue that,with further economic development and cultural secularization, its social base of sup-port will wither away. Portraying it as primarily a conservative political movement,they talk of “Islam that functions as a protest ideology of small traders, small busi-nessmen, and artisans, who often feel threatened by the increasing importance of theindustrial economy as Turkey becomes integrated into the world markets.”16 Althoughthis may have been an accurate identification of the social base of political Islam inthe NSP period, it is now anachronistic. This sector of the economy is not dwindling;on the contrary, it is ascendant in the age of globalization. Unlike the traditionalimport-substituting industrial sector that developed in the protected environment ofthe statist period, this sector thrives on free trade and open markets. Within the currentcontext of the world economy, this sector is flourishing in the Third World.

The current context of the world economy can best be understood in terms of theglobal shift from Fordism to post-Fordism.17 “Fordism” refers to a particular mode ofindustrial organization with implications for the political and institutional structuresof society. As industrial organization, it signifies the manufacturing of standardizedproducts on a large scale, with rigid assembly-line technology. At the macroeconomiclevel, Fordism has denoted the combination of mass production with mass consumers’markets, regulated by the intervention of the welfare state. Called by some authorsthe “capital–labor accord,” the welfare state has attempted to reconcile the economicinterests of the working class with those of the business class and has supported stableeconomic growth.18

Globalization, however, has begun to undermine the power of individual nation-states. The nation-states can no longer independently maintain full employment, sus-tain economic growth, and preserve reformist welfare policies. At the same time, theinternal contradictions of Fordism have led to a dismantling of rigid assembly-linetechnology and have given rise to flexible forms of capital accumulation. Prominentamong these new forms is subcontracted production, which allows employers to by-pass trade unions and circumvent restrictions in firing workers and lowering wages.Global trends toward these post-Fordist forms of “flexible accumulation” include arise in smaller-scale manufacturing and self-employment. Self-employment had a ten-dency to decline in the advanced capitalist countries until the 1970s, but since then ithas begun to grow again.19 Although this trend is partly due to the growth of the post-industrial service sectors, it can also be observed in traditional manufacturing sectors.The expansion of self-employment in recent decades appears to be an outcome of therising trend in subcontracting. Subcontracting production to self-employed manufac-turers, who are in effect workers in the guise of petty entrepreneurs, has become thechief method of achieving what is euphemistically called “numerical flexibility” andwhich in effect expresses the freedom to fire workers without suffering any conse-quences.20

The trends observed in advanced capitalist countries are even more pronounced inthe Third World, where a significant share of world manufacturing activities has beenrelocated through the global organization of production. A dominant pattern of global-ization uses trade-led networks whereby labor-intensive manufacturing takes place in

Globalization and Political Islam 437

decentralized and small-scale enterprises, which are located in the Third World andare linked to large, brand-name retailers based in advanced capitalist countries.21 Thesesubcontracted firms often use primitive technology and may rely on the older methodsof “domestic, artisanal, familial (patriarchal), and paternalistic . . . labor systems.”22

The global proliferation of these sweatshops undermines trade-union organizationsand encourages the rise of “ideologies of entrepreneurialism, paternalism, and priva-tism.”23 Political Islam in Turkey has found a particularly fertile ground in this declineof traditional working-class politics and the rise of petty entrepreneurship.

Small- and medium-scale manufacturing industries have experienced rapid growthin Turkey in recent decades. A recent survey of these industries in five provincialtowns (Denizli, Gaziantep, Konya, Corum, and Edirne) reveals the following charac-teristics. More than 80 percent of the surveyed firms were established in the post-1980 period, with almost half established after 1990. At present, the greatest numberof new firms can be found in the area of textiles and garments. About half of thesefirms report that they are subcontracted manufacturers, where subcontracting linksinclude both domestic and foreign firms. As an indirect indicator of their class origins,these small entrepreneurs report that around a third are elementary-school graduates,with another third middle- or high-school graduates.24

Government policy in the post-1980 period has encouraged this development bytaking an active role in the construction of organized industrial districts for small andmedium-size enterprises. By 1996, there were 36 such districts, housing several thou-sand establishments. Of these 36 districts, only 6 were built during the twenty-fiveyears between 1962 and 1987, whereas thirty have been built since 1987. Many moreare planned for construction at this time. Although establishments within these dis-tricts are given certain tax advantages, a common practice among these petty entrepre-neurs is to complain about lack of support from the government. This discontentfinds expression in an anti-statist discourse, although, when questioned, the smallindustrialists reveal that they would certainly welcome state support and protection.Within the organized industrial districts there is widespread exploitation of child andwomen’s labor and almost no trade-union organization at all.25

Proponents estimate that the small- and medium-scale industries in Turkey are re-sponsible for about a quarter of the country’s export potential.26 This sector, whichhas grown very rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of the export orientation ofthe Turkish economy, also seems to have absorbed large numbers of recent urbanimmigrants who were unable to find secure employment in the Fordist (i.e., formalindustrial) sectors. The working conditions of these small employers “can have a greatdeal in common with manual wage workers,” and their activities may contain manyfeatures of an informal economy.27

An interesting example of the links between the informal economy and the globalexport markets is the way in which women’s domestic piecework and family-work-shop production in some poor neighborhoods of immigrants in Istanbul are integratedwith the global economy through several layers of subcontracting relationships. Prod-uct orders that come from outside the community—for example, for hand-knit sweat-ers—are met through the organization of family labor within the community by a local(male) entrepreneur. Labor relations between this man and the women (and sometimeschildren) who do the work “are euphemized as (actual or fictive) kinship,” allowing

438 Haldun Gulalp

for the devaluation of productive labor.28 This devaluation may reach such proportionsthat, because of generalized reciprocity among the members of the community, nomonetary payments may be considered necessary, regardless of whether the work isdone at home or at a local workshop.29

Not all of these petty entrepreneurs, whether the small-scale industrialists in provin-cial towns or the intermediaries in poor neighborhoods of Istanbul, are necessarilyIslamist, but the Islamist segment of the business class comes primarily from amongthis sector. This alignment can be better explained by looking at the relationship be-tween the state and small capital.

Even the most accomplished segments of the business class in Turkey, includingthe large holding companies that combine industrial and financial concerns, feel pow-erless vis-a-vis the state. They know that they owe their existence and continuedfortune to reliance on the state.30 A bourgeois class did not exist at the beginning ofthe Turkish Republic; it was created with the help of the state.31 During the ISI period,“profit and accumulation depend[ed] to a much greater extent on policy than markets.. . . Consequently, [entrepreneurs] devoted more attention to interacting with bureau-crats and policymakers than trying to exploit market opportunities.”32 In the post-1980period, ISI was ended as a strategy, and attempts were made to create the institutionsof a self-regulating market economy. But still the state did not retreat. Clientalisticrelations between the state and businessmen continued to be dominant, and, hence,the state retained its central position for the business class.33

But despite the continuity of this general orientation, there was a significant differ-ence between the pre- and post-1980 periods. In the 1980s, the locus of decision-making shifted from the traditional bureaucratic elites to political elites.34 Decision-making power was centralized by the prime ministry, while the legislative, judiciary,and bureaucratic state institutions were weakened or undermined. This shift had sig-nificant consequences with regard to the relationship between the state and the busi-ness class. During the ISI period, the state intervented through routine bureaucraticprocedures, and “rents” arising from government policy were distributed to businesseson the basis of relatively impersonal criteria. In the post-1980 period, however, eventhe distribution of “rents” was done highly selectively, on the basis of personalizedcriteria. There was constant and particularistic state intervention, despite the rhetoricof “freedom of enterprise,” “market liberalism,” and so on.35

The corruption scandals that have plagued the political scene in Turkey in recentdecades are an outcome of this new situation, which partly explains the popularity ofthe Welfare Party during the same period. Welfare was seen by many as the cleanestof all major political parties, having stayed out of the ranks of the governmentthroughout the 1980s and 1990s, until the 1995 election. Although nothing was everproved in (or even taken to) a court of law, all other major political parties seemedto be involved directly or indirectly in some form of corrupt dealings while in power.More generally, this situation also explains Welfare’s claim that it was the only trulypro-private-enterprise party. Welfare was in effect voicing the position and the inter-ests of the newly emerging, but still peripheral, industrialist class. This mostly provin-cial class of entrepreneurs was export-oriented, highly dynamic, and successful, butit was also distant from the sources of governmental power and felt unprotected bythe state.

Globalization and Political Islam 439

A N I S L A M I C C A P I TA L I S T C U LT U R E

The division between the core and peripheral segments of the business class can alsobe seen by comparing the pro-Kemalist and pro-Islamist voluntary business associa-tions—TUSIAD and MUSIAD, respectively. TUSIAD (the Turkish Industrialist andBusinessmen’s Association) was founded in the early 1970s by a small group of big-business people who had continual close relationships with political authorities andwere thus both able and encouraged to expand their enterprises. At present, most ofthe several hundred member companies of TUSIAD are large enterprises based inIstanbul.36 MUSIAD (the Association of Independent Industrialists and Businessmen),on the other hand, was founded in 1990 to unite the small- and medium-scale enter-prises that proliferated rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of the export orienta-tion of the Turkish economy, and were open to exploitation by large capital throughsubcontracting links and left unprotected by the state. These employers were unableto find any representation in the Chambers of Commerce and Industry or in the Cham-bers of Craftsmen and Artisans. MUSIAD was founded to organize them within theframework of a voluntary association. As the official pro-Islamist line of MUSIADindicates, this new class of entrepreneurs has been an important supporter of theWelfare Party.

MUSIAD, most of whose members have fewer than twenty-five employees, main-tains that “its constituency has traditionally received unfair treatment from the stateauthority.”37 MUSIAD’s grievance is confirmed both by the testimony of the smallemployers themselves, who complain that they all are “step-children of the state”because “state policy always favors the large firm,” and by official statistics showingthat “credit given by state institutions and banks to small firms as a percentage oftotal credits has run at around three to four per cent in the last decade.”38 This is thecase even though, based on figures from 1990, small firms constitute the vast majority(more than 90 percent) of manufacturing establishments in Turkey, and they employmore than a third of those working in the manufacturing sector.39

MUSIAD, as a voluntary association, attempts to provide to its members servicesthat they would be unable to get from the state. These services include organizingconferences, publishing periodicals, and disseminating technology- and market-relatedinformation. MUSIAD organizes international fairs where members can meet foreignbusiness representatives and establish import–export links; arranges trips to fairs inforeign countries; prepares research-based reports on matters of interest and submitsthem to political authorities and to the public; prepares reports on countries thatMUSIAD members might consider doing business with and provides economic, legal,and practical information; organizes training and instruction for members in such areasas foreign languages, modern management techniques, foreign-trade procedures; and,finally, fosters feelings of solidarity and establishes networks among members.40 Thesenetworks may involve the creation of market niches or sources of investment. Thus,MUSIAD uses the Islamic identity at both the domestic and the international levelsas a basis for cooperation among businesses.41 In short, it attempts to turn “peripheral”status from a disadvantage into a network of solidarity.

According to the president of MUSIAD, Erol Yarar, the association had 3,000 mem-bers as of the first quarter of 1998, representing roughly 10,000 companies, which

440 Haldun Gulalp

together employed approximately 500,000 people.42 Most MUSIAD member compa-nies were established after 1980, in the post-ISI phase of Turkish development, andhave constituted a dynamic force in the export orientation of the Turkish economy.43

After more than a decade of export orientation in Turkey, many enterprises that startedout at a small or medium scale have been able to grow. At this point, MUSIAD alsohas numerous large-scale and growing companies among its members, but they allare very recently established and can be easily distinguished from the traditional bigbusinesses in Turkey, which still rely on the state and support Kemalism. Thus,MUSIAD represents the new and peripheral segment of the business class that sup-ports political Islam in Turkey.

Apropos to this class base, the Welfare Party’s projected “just economic order”draws a utopian picture of an egalitarian petit-bourgeois society composed of individ-ual entrepreneurs.44 In a recently published pamphlet (printed in Turkish and English),Yarar complements that picture with his own vision of a synthesis between Islamicvalues and post-Fordism. “Assessing from the point of view of industrial (that is,employer–employee) relations, it seems that the information society demands manycharacteristics of the pre-industrial, agricultural societies: family values, small andmedium-sized enterprises, and non-profit voluntary associations.”45 In the same pam-phlet, MUSIAD’s president presents the Islamic version of Max Weber’s “ProtestantEthic.” “For a Muslim individual, the goal in this life is to get the consent of theCreator, Allah. . . . In this respect, economic development is not an end in itself, butsimply a means to this end.”46

A constant theme in the discourse of all Islamist circles, including Welfare (now,Virtue), MUSIAD, and others, has been the conflict between the interests of “rent-seeking” businesses that are close to the political establishment on the one hand, andthe decent and hard-working entrepreneurs who have humble backgrounds on theother. Welfare blamed the “rentier” circles throughout its ordeal of being unable tosecure power despite an electoral victory in 1995. Likewise, MUSIAD stated, in itsreport on the Turkish economy in 1997, that the “rentier” circles were responsible forthe disruption of the democratic process, culminating in the removal of the Welfare-led government, by creating the noise about the crisis of the secular regime.47 Thesame themes can be found in the articulate diatribe of the prominent Islamist econo-mist Mustafa Ozel against what he characterizes as the rentier circles who hide behindthe shield of Kemalism and continue to exploit the people through state protection.According to Ozel, these circles, amounting to no more than a few thousand people,comprise the monopolists, the usurers, and the import-substitutionist pseudo-industri-alists, all of whom are compradors exploiting the domestic market through the powerof the state. He maintains that, by contrast, the truly competitive, export-orientedentrepreneurs, who serve the national interest, oppose the Kemalist ideology and sup-port the “Islamic liberalism” of the Welfare Party.48

This discourse was the key to Welfare’s popularity among the working class, aswell. As we will see in the next section, in the context of the collapsed welfare state,a worsening distribution of income, a continually high rate of inflation, and constantrumors of government corruption, the discourse that identified the exploiters as thosewho rely on the state and its Kemalist ideology won significant support from theworking class. The populist appeal of political Islam successfully united around a

Globalization and Political Islam 441

politics of identity both those who lost and those who gained from globalization andfrom the “neo-liberal” restructuring of the economy in the post-1980 period.49

The findings of a survey conducted in 1993 indicated that small entrepreneurs,including those who were self-employed in the informal sector, combined Islamisttendencies in social and cultural matters with “liberal” attitudes in matters of govern-ment economic policy.50 The populist rhetoric of political Islam appealed to thesesmall businessmen who were recent immigrants to the cities and seeking upwardmobility from their humble backgrounds. The same survey also revealed that in Istan-bul, popular opposition to the “status quo” (including that by the industrial workingclass) was channeled toward support for the Islamist party much more so than for thesocial democrats.51 Welfare, then, brought under one roof both the peripheral segmentsof the business class and people from the working class and attempted to unite themaround a common Islamic identity. As we will see next, for the working class, the riseof political Islam represented the decline of social democracy and its replacement bya politics of identity.

G L O BA L I Z AT I O N A N D T H E D E C L I N E O F T H E W E L FA R E S TAT E

We have identified the 1980s as the critical turning point in Turkey’s new economicstrategy and in the rise of political Islam as a populist movement. The link betweenthe new socio-economic trends and the themes that political Islam has raised as anopposition movement can be observed in some social and economic indicators.

Urbanization reached unprecedented proportions in the post-1980 period. The urbanshare of Turkey’s population in 1960 was only 32 percent. Within thirty years, how-ever—that is, in 1990—59 percent of the population was living in cities. The shareof the urban population surpassed the share of the rural population for the first timein the 1980s. The rural population actually declined in absolute numbers in the sametime frame. The rate of urban growth from 1980 to 1990 was a staggering 70 percent.52

As suggested earlier, rapid urbanization led to the expansion of the informal sectorand of the small manufacturing sector engaged in subcontracted work, but it did notbring about an improvement in the economic welfare of the working classes, whichsuffered a steady decline in real wages throughout the 1980s.53 The share of urbanwages and salaries in national income (gross domestic product, or GDP) declinedfrom 32.7 percent in the late 1970s (1974–77) to 20.8 percent in the late 1980s (1988–91).54 In contrast, the increasing significance of “rentier” earnings in national incomeduring the same period could be seen in the growing proportion of “interest” incometo the GDP, which shot up from 1.9 percent in 1980 to 14.1 percent in 1988.55 Finally,the distribution of household income worsened during this period. In 1994, the topquintile of households received 54.9 percent of total income (up from 49.9 percent in1987) while the bottom quintile received only 4.9 percent (down from 5.2 percent in1987). The distribution was even more skewed toward the top. In the same year, thetop 5 percent of the population received 30.3 percent of total income, and the top 1percent received as much as 16.6 percent.56

These figures explain why a populist discourse of “justice” and “welfare” (the nameof the Islamist party) and a critique of the “rentiers” would appeal to the poor and thedispossessed. The social democrats who could resort to the same kind of discourse

442 Haldun Gulalp

could not prevail over the Islamists during this period because of the historical associ-ation of the social-democratic tradition in Turkey with Kemalist ideology as the advo-cate of a modernization and Westernization project from above. The Welfare Party’srise signified the decline of social democracy as the bearer of the Kemalist legacy inTurkey.57

This can best be seen by comparing the Welfare Party’s electoral performance rela-tive to the social democrats in the 1980s and 1990s with that of the NSP in the1970s.58 In the 1970s, the level of development of the provinces had an inverse rela-tionship with the relative strength of the NSP and a positive relationship with therelative strength of the social-democratic Republican People’s Party (RPP). With re-gard to the size of cities, too, the RPP was the clear winner in the largest ones, whilethe NSP did poorly in them.59 By contrast, in the 1990s, Welfare had been particularlysuccessful in big cities.

Welfare’s rise in the 1990s was at the expense of the social-democratic parties.Welfare’s voter base grew fastest in poor neighborhoods that lie at the periphery oflarge metropolitan centers—neighborhoods that were the solid source of support forsocial democrats in the 1970s.60 The Welfare Party spoke the language of socio-eco-nomic justice and equality in poor urban neighborhoods. Filling the void created bythe collapse of statism and the ensuing crisis of modernist ideologies that were basedon it, such as nationalism and socialism, Welfare represented a post-nationalist andpost-socialist sense of “justice.” The Islamic sense of justice was not only manifestedin the realm of ideology. More concretely, in the 1980s the functions of the defunctwelfare state were taken on by local religious organizations and foundations workingto help the poor in urban neighborhoods, thereby contributing to the popularity of theIslamist political movement. This was particularly instrumental in Welfare’s successin local elections.61

There was a class pattern of support for the Welfare Party. A recent survey revealedthat a majority of Welfare supporters did not have much knowledge of Welfare’sprogram for creating a “just order,” but believed that it had something to do withcreating an “egalitarian” and “nearly socialist” society. A majority of Welfare’s sup-porters were clearly motivated not by religious, but by political, demands.62

I S L A M I S T C H A L L E N G E T O K E M A L I S M A N D T H E

P R O F E S S I O N A L M I D D L E C L A S S

Finally, we will address the Islamist professional middle class concerned with statusissues. The recently growing group of intellectuals who support political Islam hasmanifested itself in the proliferation of Islamist publications in the 1980s and 1990s.The emergence of a segment of university students and upwardly mobile young pro-fessionals as active supporters of political Islam is a new phenomenon because, inTurkey, “intellectual” and “Westernized” have traditionally been identical. Turkishmodernization was led by an “enlightened” bureaucratic elite, for whom moderniza-tion was synonymous with Westernization.

With the global crisis of modernism and the rising challenges against the universalmyths of Western civilization, however, the promises of the Kemalist project beganto lose credibility. The deconstruction of the universal pretensions of European civili-

Globalization and Political Islam 443

zation, and the growing recognition of its character as a provincial culture with itsown hegemonic project, allowed for alternative visions of civilization to gain currency.Just as in the West the crisis of ideologies based on modernism led to the rise ofseveral post-modernist politics of identity,63 so, too, in Turkey the crisis of moderniza-tion led to Islamism. Islamist themes, such as anti-Westernism, championing the pe-riphery against the center, and emphasizing the particularism of Islamic culture, beganto find resonance among the post-modernist sensibilities of a new generation of stu-dents and other intellectuals whose counterparts in the West favored environmentalismand multi-culturalism as political projects.64 The post-modern condition, in otherwords, allowed for questioning of the unquestionable truths of Turkey’s Westerniza-tion project, hence contributing to the popularity of a movement that was hithertounable to gain a widespread following.

Like other post-modern identity politics, Islamism has both cross-class and cross-national claims. The (imagined) immutable quality of Islamic identity, perhaps para-doxically, originates from accepting the Eurocentric assertion of an essential differ-ence between European and non-European cultures. In the post-modern age, thoseidentities, such as class, that derive from modern social structures have been replacedby the defense of authenticity, and those cultural sources which are perceived as tradi-tional are appropriated in the name of diversity.

Many observers have noted the connection between the post-Fordist context andthe increasing salience of “culture wars” at the expense of class struggles.65 Theseculture wars characterize what generally have been called the “new social movements”and seem to be unrelated to socio-economic issues. For example, unlike the Fordistcompromise between labor and capital over the distribution of rewards that accruefrom increased productivity, new social movements tend to reject the productivist dealand advocate post-materialist values, such as the protection of the environment.66

Despite this appearance, however, it is still possible to identify the class foundationof the “culture wars.” Middle-class professionals, unlike labor and capital, are notanchored in the capitalist relations of production; hence, they are primarily concernedwith “status.” Cultural capital in general is a source of “social closure” that generatesand maintains status stratification.67 The class interests of intellectuals and other mid-dle-class professionals do not directly engender political projects involving the trans-formation of production relations, although intellectuals may individually attach them-selves to the advocacy of the interests of other classes. Culture wars originating fromthe “status struggles” of (and within) the professional middle class have become moresalient than class struggle because of the weakening organization and resistance ofthe working class due to the post-Fordist globalization process. Their salience, indeed,has become a marker of the post-modern age.68

In Turkey, status stratification within the professional middle class has primarilytaken place along the lines of whether one has accepted the Kemalist ideology andinternalized the Western lifestyle. Indeed, given the Kemalist identification of “West-ernized” with “enlightened,” the now widely used term “Islamist intellectual” has untilrecently been considered an oxymoron (and now an unlikely, even exotic, phenome-non—hence the qualifier). Thus, the status struggle, which has become easier for theIslamists because of the post-modern weakening of Kemalism, is especially true forthe middle-class professionals and Islamist intellectuals who have parochial and mod-

444 Haldun Gulalp

est backgrounds but ambitions of upward mobility and empowerment. As MichaelMeeker observes, “the Muslim intellectuals are not unwilling urban residents yearningto return to the security of the rural town or village where there was no need to thinkthrough who one was and what one was to do. They are very much creatures of thecontemporary Turkish city, like their secular counterparts.”69

It was suggested earlier that the multi-class populism of the Islamist party could beseen in its ambiguous, often contradictory statements aiming to appeal to both theworking class and the capitalist class. A similar situation can be observed betweenthe “post-modernist” middle class and the accumulation-minded capitalist-class wingsof political Islam. For example, MUSIAD’s president, Yarar, states, “We must em-brace the motto ‘High Morality, High Technology’ in our scientific and commercialefforts.”70 But high technology is rejected by the post-modern philosophy of the lead-ing Islamist authors. This divergence of views created a division within the Islamistcamp with regard to Necmettin Erbakan’s policies when he came to power. One ofErbakan’s first acts as prime minister was to organize a trip to East Asia in order toset up economic and political ties with Islamic nations in the region and to presentthem as a model at home of how economic and technological development could becombined with “cultural authenticity.” The response to this move from the prominentIslamist theorist Ali Bulac, torn between the desire to oppose Erbakan’s policy andthe commitment to support his government, was one of bitter resignation. “I, for one,believe that such concepts as modernity and development have destructive effects.But I also accept that the Muslim world, and Turkey in particular, have to swallowthis bitter pill. Therefore, what needs to be done should be done right away.”71 Thisexample also serves to illustrate another characteristic of populist movements in gen-eral—that is, their reliance on lower classes when in opposition and their willingnessto serve the interests of upper classes when in power.

C O N C L U S I O N

The social base of political Islam in Turkey, then, can be conceived of as a verticalbloc comprising segments of different socio-economic classes. Although they havedifferent concerns and motives for supporting political Islam, these different segmentsof society are united in their common opposition to Kemalism and their expression ofpolitical will through the assertion of an Islamic identity. The Welfare Party success-fully managed to keep these diverse forces under one roof and emerged as a powerfulopposition movement to the status quo.

Welfare’s vertical bloc of support included the following class segments:

1. The peripheral segment of the capitalist class, consisting of small- and medium-scale, andmostly provincial, businesses. The interests of this segment have been opposed to the inter-ests of the mostly Istanbul-based big capital, which has grown in cooperation with the state.In recent years, however, taking advantage of the export orientation of the economy, Islamiccapital has also grown, leading to the foundation of some holding companies that havereached the size and economic power of many units of “core” capital.

2. The professional middle class, whose peripheral segment has consisted of those universitygraduates who have a conservative and mostly provincial background and who have begunto challenge the “core” professional elite who are the fundamental mainstay of Kemalism

Globalization and Political Islam 445

in Turkey. In recent years, taking advantage of the trends toward asserting authenticity, thissegment has established itself as a legitimate category of “intellectuals.”

3. The working class, whose peripheral segment has consisted of the recent immigrants to thecities who have mostly been unable to find secure employment and have engaged in mar-ginal activities. Unlike the established and organized working class, which is close to the“core” through formal links with the state, this segment of the dispossessed has been proneto be swayed by non-mainstream political movements. The efforts of the Islamist politicalparty to mobilize a mass-based movement through populist propaganda has been directedmostly toward this social segment. But political Islam has also won support among the moreestablished working class.72

In recent years each of these groups has been growing numerically and as a socialor economic force. This opposition began to challenge the state, whose welfare anddevelopmentalist ideology and practices entered a declining phase due to a weakeningassociated with processes of globalization and post-modernization. The weakening ofthe protectionist practices of the state left its oppressive character more apparent thanbefore and created an opportunity for waging an assault on its founding ideology ofKemalism. This set of conditions resulted partly from the relative strengthening ofsome peripheral groups and partly from the weakening and consequent politicizationof others. Globalization has strengthened peripheral capital and peripheral profession-als while it has adversely affected the working class. With its radical rhetoric in theface of the failures of Turkey’s Westernization project, the Islamist movement hencewas able in the 1990s to broaden its base of support by appealing to a wider rangeand greater variety of disaffected social segments.

N O T E S

Author’s note: This paper is based on a report originally prepared for the project on “Muslim Voicesin the European Union,” funded by the European Union and coordinated by Dr. Pandeli Glavanis at theUniversity of Manchester. I am grateful to the editor of this journal and the anonymous readers of thisarticle for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

1See Phillip Berryman, Liberation Theology (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987). For the English transla-tion of one of the original programmatic statements of liberation theology, see Gustavo Gutierrez, “Libera-tion, Theology, and Proclamation,” in The Pope and Revolution, ed. Quentin Quade (Washington, D.C.:Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1982).

2Serif Mardin, “Center–Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?” Daedalus 102 (1973): 169–90.3Nilufer Gole, “Secularism and Islamism in Turkey: The Making of Elites and Counter-Elites” Middle

East Journal 51 (1997): 52. See also idem, “Authoritarian Secularism and Islamist Politics: The Case ofTurkey,” in Civil Society in the Middle East, ed. Augustus Richard Norton (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 2:20–25.

4See Yael Navaro-Yashin, “Uses and Abuses of ‘State and Civil Society’ in Contemporary Turkey,” NewPerspectives on Turkey 18 (1998): 1–22.

5Mardin, “Center–Periphery Relations.”6See Binnaz Toprak, “Religion as State Ideology in a Secular Setting: The Turkish–Islamic Synthesis,”

in Aspects of Religion in Modern Turkey, ed. J. M. Wagstaff, University of Durham, Center for MiddleEastern and Islamic Studies, Occasional Paper Series, no. 40 (1990); Umit Cizre Sakallıoglu, “Parametersand Strategies of Islam–State Interaction in Republican Turkey,” International Journal of Middle EastStudies 28 (1996): 231–51.

7Nilufer Gole, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (Ann Arbor: University of MichiganPress, 1996).

8See, for example, Michael Meeker, “The New Muslim Intellectuals in the Republic of Turkey,” in Islam

446 Haldun Gulalp

in Modern Turkey, ed. Richard Tapper (London: I. B. Tauris, 1991), 189–219; Binnaz Toprak, “IslamistIntellectuals: Revolt against Industry and Technology,” in Turkey and the West: Changing Political andCultural Identities, ed. Metin Heper, Ayse Oncu, and H. Kramer (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993), 237–57.

9James Mittelman, ed., Globalization: Critical Perspectives (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1996).10David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Ox-

ford: Basil Blackwell, 1989); Arif Dirlik, “The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age ofGlobal Capitalism,” Critical Inquiry 20 (1994): 328–56.

11For further discussion of this concept, see Stephen Crook, Jan Pakulski, and Malcolm Waters, Postmod-ernization (London: Sage Publications, 1992). See also Harvey, Condition of Postmodernity.

12Understanding the link between globalization and the rise of political Islam may also help account forthe more general phenomenon noted in recent literature as the seemingly contradictory union of “McDon-aldization and tribalism”: see Benjamin Barber, “Jihad vs. McWorld,” Atlantic Monthly (March 1992),53–63.

13Torcuata Di Tella, “Populism into the Twenty-first Century,” Government and Opposition 32 (1997):187–200.

14The classic work on ISI is Albert O. Hirschman, “The Political Economy of Import-Substituting Indus-trialization in Latin America,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 82 (1968): 1–32.

15Ahmet Yucekok, Turkiye’de Din ve Siyaset (Istanbul: Gercek Yayınları, 1983); Turker Alkan, “TheNational Salvation Party in Turkey,” in Islam and Politics in the Modern Middle East, ed. Metin Heperand Raphael Israeli (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984); Binnaz Toprak, “Politicization of Islam in aSecular State: The National Salvation Party in Turkey,” in From Nationalism to Revolutionary Islam, ed.Said Amir Arjomand (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Ali Yasar Sarıbay, Turkiye’deDin ve Parti Politikası: MSP Ornek Olayı (Istanbul: Alan Yayıncılık, 1985).

16Faruk Birtek and Binnaz Toprak, “The Conflictual Agendas of Neo-Liberal Reconstruction and theRise of Islamic Politics in Turkey: The Hazards of Rewriting Modernity,” Praxis International 13 (1993):199. See also Binnaz Toprak, “Islam and the Secular State in Turkey” in Turkey: Political, Social andEconomic Challenges in the 1990s, ed. Cigdem Balım, et al. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995); Ahmet Yucekok,Dinin Siyasallasması: Din-Devlet Iliskilerinde Turkiye Deneyimi (Istanbul: Afa Yayınları, 1997).

17See Ash Amin, ed., Post-Fordism (London: Blackwell, 1994).18Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, “The Labor-Capital Accord,” in The Transformation of Industrial

Organization, ed. Frank Hearn (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1988).19George Steinmetz and Erik Olin Wright, “The Fall and Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie: Changing Patterns

of Self-Employment in the Postwar United States,” American Journal of Sociology 94 (1989): 975–1007.20Crook et al., Postmodernization, 177–90; Anna Pollert, “Dismantling Flexibility” Capital and Class,

34 (1988): 42–75.21See Gary Gereffi, “Capitalism, Development and Global Commodity Chains,” in Capitalism and Devel-

opment, ed. Leslie Sklair (London: Routledge, 1994), and idem, “Global Production Systems and ThirdWorld Development,” in Global Change: Regional Response, ed. Barbara Stallings (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1995).

22Harvey, Condition of Postmodernity, 152.23Ibid., 192.24Sevil Kisoglu, A. H. Kose, A. Oncu, and G. Cakar, “Anadolu Sanayisi Arastırma Raporunun Sunul-

ması,” in 1997 Sanayi Kongresi, ed. Makine Muhendisleri Odası (Ankara, 1997), 1–90.25Oguz Oyan and Aziz Konukman, “Esnek Isgucu Piyasaları, Anadolu Kaplanları ve Sendikalasma,” in

1997 Sanayi Kongresi, 233–38.26Mustafa Sahin, “Turkiye’de Kucuk ve Orta Boy Isletmelerin (KOBI’lerin) Onemi,” MUSIAD Bulteni,

no. 20 (Nisan–Mayıs [April–May] 1997), 35.27Theo Nichols and Nadir Sugur, “Small Employers in Turkey: The OSTIM Estate at Ankara,” Middle

Eastern Studies 32 (1996): 250.28Jenny White, Money Makes Us Relatives: Women’s Labor in Urban Turkey (Austin: Texas University

Press, 1994), 105.29Ibid., 105–31.30Ayse Bugra, State and Business in Turkey: A Comparative Study (Albany: State University of New

York Press, 1994), 4–5.31See Caglar Keyder, State and Class in Turkey (London: NLB, 1987).

Globalization and Political Islam 447

32Ziya Onis, State and Market (Istanbul: Bogazici University Press, 1998), 244.33Bugra, State and Business, 264; Onis, State and Market, 253.34Onis, State and Market, 255.35Korkut Boratav, 1980’li Yıllarda Turkiye’de Sosyal Sınıflar ve Bolusum (Istanbul: Gercek Yayınları,

1991), 92–97.36Bugra, State and Business, chap. 5; Ayse Bugra, “Class, Culture, and State: An Analysis of Interest

Representation by two Turkish Business Associations,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 30(1998): 521–39.

37Bugra, “Class, Culture, and State,” 525.38Nadir Sugur, “Small Firm Flexibility in Turkey: The Case of OSTIM Industrial District at Ankara,”

New Perspectives on Turkey, 16 (1997): 99–100.39Nichols and Sugur, “Small Employers in Turkey,” 231.40MUSIAD Publicity Pamphlet, n.d.41Bugra, “Class, Culture, and State.”42Interview on the television program 32.Gun, 14 April 1998.43Bugra, “Class, Culture, and State.”44Necmettin Erbakan, Adil Ekonomik Duzen (Ankara, 1991). For a critical assessment, see Haldun Gulalp,

“Political Islam in Turkey: The Rise and Fall of the Refah Party,” The Muslim World 89 (1999): 27–28.45Erol Yarar, A New Perspective of the World at the Threshold of the 21st Century (Istanbul: MUSIAD,

n.d. [1996]), 8.46Ibid., 45.47MUSIAD Bulteni, no. 22 (Agustos–Eylul [August–September], 1997), 7–11.48Mustafa Ozel, Refahlı Turkiye (Istanbul: Iz Yayınları, 1997).49Ziya Onis, “The Political Economy of Islamic Resurgence in Turkey: The Rise of the Welfare Party

in Perspective,” Third World Quarterly 18 (1997): 743–66.50Korkut Boratav, Istanbul ve Anadolu’dan Sınıf Profilleri (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1995), 104.51Ibid., 94.52State Institute of Statistics, Statistical Yearbook of Turkey (Ankara, 1996).53Boratav, 1980’li Yıllarda, 37.54Hasan Kirmanoglu, “Refah Partisi’nin Yukselisinin Ekonomi Politigi,” Istanbul Bilgi Universitesi Aras-

tırma Merkezi, mimeo (1997), 18.55Boratav, 1980’li Yıllarda, 55.56State Institute of Statistics, Income Distribution (Household Income Distribution Survey Results) (An-

kara, 1994).57In this context we may also recall the commonly heard argument that the growth of political Islam was

due to the support provided by the generals during the military regime of the 1980s in their attempt tosuppress the left. See, for example, Toprak, “Religion as State Ideology,” and Sakallıoglu, “Parameters andStrategies.” Although it may be true that the generals supported the Islamists against the leftists, thisargument ignores the crucial facts that traditional left-wing politics declined in a process not even fullyunderstood (let alone engineered) by the generals and that, in the same time frame, not only Islamism butalso other sorts of religion-based political movements began to sprout around the world.

58For a more detailed analysis, see Gulalp, “Political Islam in Turkey,” 29–32.59Sarıbay, Turkiye’de Din ve Parti, 155–70.60Aydın Koymen, Necat Erder, and Ahmet Kardam, “TUSES Arastırması, Secim Sonucları ve Sosyal

Demokrasinin Krizi Uzerine,” Sosyal Demokrat Degisim, no. 1 (1996); Erol Tuncer, “24 Aralık 1995 GenelSecimlerine Iliskin Sayısal ve Genel Bir Degerlendirme,” ibid.; Gulgun Tosun and Tanju Tosun, “27 Mart1994 Yerel Secimlerinden 24 Aralık 1995 Genel Secimlerine: Siyasal Cografyaya Iliskin Gozlemler,” AmmeIdaresi Dergisi 29 (1996).

61Rusen Cakır, Ayet ve Slogan: Turkiye’de Islami Olusumlar (Istanbul: Metis Yayınları, 1990); MustafaHaki Okutucu, Istikamet Seriat: Refah Partisi (Istanbul: Yeryuzu Yayınları, 1996), 76–84.

62ARAS, Refah Arastırması (Ankara, 1994), 24–27, 34.63Pauline Marie Rosenau, Postmodernism and the Social Sciences (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University

Press, 1992).64See Haldun Gulalp, “Postmodernism and Islamism,” Contention 4 (1995): 59–73; and idem, “Globaliz-

ing Postmodernism: Islamist and Western Social Theory,” Economy and Society 26 (1997): 419–33.

448 Haldun Gulalp

65See, for example, Scott Lash and John Urry, Economies of Signs and Space (London: Sage Publications,1994); Robert J. Antonio and Alessandro Bonanno, “Post-Fordism in the United States: The Poverty ofMarket-Centered Democracy,” Current Perspectives in Social Theory 16 (1996): 3–32.

66George Steinmetz, “Regulation Theory, Post-Marxism, and the New Social Movements,” ComparativeStudies in Society and History 36 (1994): 192–94.

67On the concept of “social closure,” see Jeff Manza, “Classes, Status Groups, and Social Closure: ACritique of Neo-Weberian Social Theory,” Current Perspectives in Social Theory 12 (1992): 275–302.

68See, for example, Scott Lash, Sociology of Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1990), 4.69Meeker, “New Muslim Intellectuals,” 217.70Yarar, New Perspective, 47. See also Erol Yarar, “Tekno-ekonomik Paradigma ile Satranc” Cerceve 15

(1995): 7.71Yeni Safak, 22 August 1996.72There is also a fourth group of people who have supported Welfare but who cannot be identified in

terms of class position: Kurds who were disaffected by the Turkish government’s handling of the Kurdishissue but were unwilling to support the PKK. The origins of the Kurdish movement and Kurdish supportfor Welfare lie beyond the scope of this paper. For a treatment of Welfare’s Kurdish policy, see HamitBozarslan, “Political Crisis and the Kurdish Issue in Turkey,” in The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the1990s: Its Impact on Turkey and the Middle East, ed. Robert Olson (Lexington: University Press of Ken-tucky, 1996); Haldun Gulalp, “Islamism and Kurdish Nationalism: Rival Adversaries of Kemalism in Tur-key,” in Islam and the Question of Minorities, ed. Tamara Sonn (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1996).