Islamism in Turkey: beyond instrument and...

Islamism in Turkey beyondinstrument and meaning

Cihan TugAElig al

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to show that strictly materialist or culturalist approachesare inadequate for the theorization of religious political movements Drawing fromthe insights provided by these approaches I contend that Islamism is a novel form ofcounter-hegemonic politics which I call religio-moral populism Like every hege-mony it has to be handled as an articulation of con icting interests and aspirationsBy deploying Castoriadisrsquo model of the institution of society in my reading of theIslamist press in Turkey I argue that the imaginary and imagination have to becomepart of the vocabulary utilized by the analysis of religion in order to deal with the ten-sions generated by such an articulation I demonstrate my cases through an interpre-tation of discussions among Islamists on poverty capitalism and justice

Keywords Islamism populism religion Turkey class imagination

Scholars and policy makers around the globe recognize that religion might beslowly becoming the main anti-systemic force replacing socialism as an alterna-tive social movement However both the confusion on the Left and the chang-ing logic of worldwide anti-hegemonic struggle suggest that what is at stake isnot simply the succession of anti-systemic forces The way in which opponentsde ne the lsquosystemrsquo and the way they imagine the alternatives have changed dramatically This shift leads us to interrogate the source and meaning of newanti-systemic resistance

In this article I develop a theory of religious political movements in order tounderstand this change Scholars have either analysed religious movements withwhat we could call cultural paradigms taking them as expressions of civiliza-tionalcultural lsquoessencesrsquo or reactions of tradition against modernity (Arjomand1984) or with material paradigms interpreting them as mediated responses tosupposedly more fundamental (political and economic) processes (Smart 1991

Copyright copy 2002 Taylor amp Francis LtdISSN 0308-5147 print1469-5766 onlineDOI 10108003085140120109268

Economy and Society Volume 31 Number 1 February 2002 85ndash111

Cihan TugAEligal Department of Sociology University of Michigan USA

Henry 1986) Here I contend that we need to combine both material and cul-tural understandings of religion in order to reach an adequate interpretation ofthis phenomenon I shall focus on Islamist movements in general and the move-ment in contemporary Turkey in particular to illustrate my main points I arguethat Islamism which is currently interpreted as pre-rational lsquopetty bourgeoispopulismrsquo or traditionalism needs to be understood instead as a multivalentreligio-moral populism ndash a potentially explosive articulation of different classinterests and religious cravings I shall demonstrate my argument through aclose reading of prominent Islamist newspapers and journals for a ve-monthperiod

One must remember however that the militant and long-standing state policyof secularization and modernism distinguishes Turkey from other Islamic coun-tries Secularizing techniques have affected almost every community and indi-vidual in the country This condition problematizes approaches that tend to seereligious movements as the return to concerns and structures which ThirdWorld states have attempted to repress (Haynes 1993) Whereas Islamism isclearly responding to these secularizing policies Turkeyrsquos peculiar conditionaffirms that religious movements cannot be explained through recourse to atheory of deeply entrenched forms waiting to be lsquorevivedrsquo1 Also the long tra-dition of (non-Islamic) socialism and Marxism in this country (another differ-entiating factor from other Islamic countries) makes it unlikely that thepopulation would lsquoregressrsquo to so-called lsquoirrationalrsquo forms of protest despite theavailability of lsquorationalrsquo ones2 In other words the strong mass appeal ofreformist and revolutionary leftist movements in Turkey of the 1970s casts adoubt on certain materialist interpretations which argue that religious move-ments are substitutes for mass mobilization when there is a lack of full-blownrational alternatives These peculiarities of Turkey require a novel typology forIslamism more developed than models focusing on traditionalism and pre-rational populism

Sociological traditions and contemporary Islam

Even though there is a wide spectrum of paradigms concerning contemporaryreligious movements the theoretical scene tends to be polarized into thosereducing the rise of religious politics to material variables (lsquomaterialistrsquoapproaches) and those emphasizing cultural factors to the detriment of materialones (lsquoideationalrsquo approaches) They may differ on a wide range of topics butMarxist neo-Marxist and historical-institutional paradigms share a commonground in that they take religious meaning systems as instruments of socialactors Hence the label materialist Essentialist and meaning-oriented paradigmsare irreconcilable on a set of issues including their respective narratives regard-ing continuity and change in cultural systems However they both take themeaning system to be the sole explanatory factor when analysing religious poli-tics and hence the label ideational In the following sections I shall take up each

86 Economy and Society

of these ve paradigms in turn and discuss their relative strengths and weak-nesses

Classical and orthodox Marxism

Despite the once wide acceptance among Marxists of an orthodoxy emphasiz-ing consolatorypalliative instrumental (that is instrumental for the dominantclasses) and depoliticizing aspects of religion in social life (Marx 1974 McKown1975 McLellan 1987) ndash an orthodoxy that has quite often blinded socialists tothe constructive potentials of religion ndash some Marxist and Marxians have recog-nized that religion has often functioned as a tool for protest throughout history(Engels 1926 Kautsky 1953 Thompson 1963) Yet even these theorists haveshared with other Enlightenment-inspired thinkers the belief that religion wasbound to fade away with the development of capitalism and the scienti c ration-ality it built itself on The secularization thesis3 was (and to a certain extent is)shared by Marxists structural functionalists (Toprak 1981) and Weberians alikeOne of the more insightful Marxist thinkers has even stated that religion is lsquotheimage of perfect justicersquo and that rational images of justice would eventuallyreplace religion (Horkheimer 1972)4 Others in uenced by Marxism have recog-nized religion as a form of social protest though restricting the relevance of thisdimension of religion to non-modern societies (Rodinson 1972) In modernsocieties some Marxists have subsequently argued religion cannot but be apo-litical a refuge of ignorance (Portelli 1974) Yet we witness that religious imagesof justice and religiously inspired social protests are gradually taking over or atleast claiming the territory traditionally occupied by various leftisms

Neo-Marxist revisions

The recent lsquomaterialistrsquo literature on Islamist movements restricts Islamism toa class movement albeit in a signi cantly different and more complex way thanclassical and orthodox Marxist views Even though the new materialist literaturerecognizes the potential mobilizing and politicizing force of contemporaryreligion the older framework still lurks in the background assuming thatIslamism due to its lsquoirrationalityrsquo and moralizing tendencies is inherently in-capable of solving the issues it addresses (Ayubi 1991 ch 10) More generallyit sees Islamism as an ideology of a Third Worldist populist movement domi-nated by the petty bourgeoisie (Fischer 1982)5 The most signi cant shortcom-ings of this approach include its designation of Islam as a mere mobilizationallsquotoolrsquo (Keddie 1991 304) for the excluded exploited alienated masses and itsneglect of the role of Islam as a meaning system Since the oppressive regimesof the Middle East are more or less secular and since Islam is lsquopart and parcelrsquoof popular culture Islam this approach argues is bound to become the languageof this populism (Burke 1998 Abrahamian 1991) In so doing the approach

Cihan TugAEligal Islamism in Turkey 87

reduces Islamism to being a substitute for older secular Third World nation-alisms or populisms (Hegland 1987)

The historical-institutional approach

This position exempli ed by Sami Zubaida (1993) focuses on particular his-torical conjunctures nested in general socio-economic processes (such as urban-ization political centralization widening of literacy communication andtransport) rather than on class forces Zubaida states that unemployment frauda boom in the young population the bankruptcy of education have created aresentment in the masses of the Middle East which is channelled to Islamic poli-tics for historical reasons According to Zubaida these masses could as wellsupport nationalist or socialist movements if the latter had not failed in oppos-ing imperialism and if lsquotheir leaderships and ideologiesrsquo had not been lsquosubordi-nated to and utilized by the ruling cliques and consequently taintedrsquo (1993xviii) The autonomy of religious institutions and the Middle Eastern statesrsquoinability to repress activities therein added to the other institutional advantagesof the Islamist movements since all other opposition was repressed ferociouslyZubaida also draws attention to the fact that popular Islam is syncretisticmagical and mystic as opposed to the ideology of the Islamists which is puri-tanical and quite modern Due to this distance between the two interpretationsof religion he argues Islamism cannot be seen as a continuity with the Islampreserved in the meaning worlds of the folk

The historical-institutional approach is stronger than other materialistapproaches in bringing in history as conjuncture rather than universal develop-ment However since it rejects taking Islamrsquos popular force in the Middle Eastinto account it is not as strong in interpreting the legitimacy generated byreligious politics Religious ideology and activists have also been used by MiddleEastern authorities for centuries Why have they not been lsquotaintedrsquo to the samedegree as their nationalist and socialist counterparts Why for instance has theTurkish state not been able to take the activities in mosques under controldespite the official recognition that places of worship are one of the primarygrounds of organization and recruitment for Islamism Is this all because Islamas a way of life and as a way of imagining the world is a signi cant dimension ofpopular tradition Islamism rather than being the expression of the self-samecontinuity of a religious essence is a critical refashioning of this imaginary forthe struggle against a modern capitalist system Even though it is clearly differ-entiated from popular versions of Islam it is in a much better situation to relatedialogically to the popular imagination when compared with other transforma-tory political movements whose ideologies are even further distanced frompopular culture

I argue in this paper that Islam (or rather Islam as it is interpreted byIslamists) is not an instrument utilized once a populism emerges or once theconditions for its emergence are established ndash as all three materialist paradigms


contend On the contrary I suggest that Islam actively shapes this populism andimposes a certain form on it Speci cally it de nes the boundaries of inclusionand exclusion and determines who should be participating in this politics I alsodelineate the problems implicit in the most recent interpretation of the popu-lism of Islamists in Turkey as lsquopetit bourgeoisrsquo (Guumllalp 1999) such a formulationI contend misses the processual nature of a much richer and contradictorypopulism that is always being made and remade I further locate this richnessboth in the plurality of class dynamics within the movement (the coexistence ofthe urban poor the petty bourgeoisie and the provincial bourgeoisie) and in thecomplications entailed in the use of Islam itself as a guide for aspirations (thatis the tensions arising from utilizing a complex meaning system)

Essentialist reductions

In order to explain the rise of religious movements in the Islamic world culturaland civilizational approaches to religion have emphasized the distinctiveness ofIslam as a meaning system based on the belief in the essential separateness ofIslam as a way of life (Weber 1963 Gellner 1981) The more popular and pub-licly in uential versions of these approaches account not only for the rise ofIslamism but also for the explosion of religious movements throughout theworld by evoking the essential differences between civilizations (Huntington1996) This type of explanation singles out certain elements within complexsystems of meaning and presents them as the essence of a society or culture Yetthese principles held to be lsquoessencesrsquo (such as conspicuous consumption inIslam)6 are time and group bound The essentialist approach neglects the factthat the principles in question are sometimes restricted to certain historicalperiods and social groups and also that they sometimes cut across societies andcultures

Meaning-oriented explanations and Islamism as lsquotraditionalismrsquo

A more convincing way of bringing in the distinct quality of religious move-ments ndash the obvious that instrumentalist approaches neglect ndash is to underlinethe search for meaning and moral order (Wuthnow 1987 1991 Bellah 1970Berger 1969 Geertz 1973) Religious movements are perceived here as responsesto modern systems of thought which do not offer communities and individualsadequate meaning systems This argument does not however explain why insome cases religion becomes an oppositional search for meaning while in othersit either sancti es the reigning secular institutions or merely seeks to modifythem Some scholars have suggested that religion thus speci ed (as search formeaning) becomes radical upon the erosion of communal personal ties or uponthe severe challenge of the meaning system (Riesebrodt 1993 Marty andAppleby 1991) They therefore argue that radical religious movements are


nothing but radical ways of protecting tradition They agree that these move-ments adapt some modern ideas techniques and organizations but qualify allas defensive measures as ad hoc modi cations for preserving tradition in amodernizing world In Turkey too scholars have generally conceptualizedIslamism as a reaction to rapid change and modernization (Hann 1997Sakallotilde ogAElig lu 1996) thereby failing to grasp the degree to which most religiousmovements are also responses to modern problems such as capitalist exploitationand centralized totalitarian authoritarianism As such religious movements donot preserve tradition as much as actively create their own modernities throughcritically adapting and revising traditions and communities

Synthesis of the approaches

Certain analysts of religious radicalism in the Third World have recognized thatboth material and cultural factors have to be introduced in understanding therise of religious politics Eric Davis (1987) for example has introduced bothreligious movementsrsquo critique of secularism and consumerist materialism andtheir promise of wealth and independence in his account of the reasons lyingbehind religious radicalism These scholars however have taken material andcultural factors as additive and have not analysed how they are intertwined andarticulated Certain analyses of liberation theology (Leonard 1998) have simi-larly enumerated material (state repression) and ideational factors (changes inthe line of Vatican) but have not combined these in a satisfactory theoreticalmatrix The intersection of material and ideational concerns within religiousmovements has yet to be fully explored

The interactive relation between the imaginary and the real as portrayed byCornelius Castoriadis (1987) offers a starting point in understanding how theseconcerns intersect and why meaning systems become oppositional at certainjunctures Castoriadis recognizes that human beings are characterized by asearch for meaning which can be thought or imagined This search is located inlsquothe imaginaryrsquo the human capacity to imagine and represent things andrelations The imaginary creates a gap between the real (institutions relationsof production and domination) and the symbolic (the signi cation of the real inthe realm of language and symbols) That is the symbolic is always a represen-tation of the real never an exact re ection

In Castoriadisrsquo model the symbolic and the imaginary are by no meanslsquounrealrsquo in the conventional sense Through the imaginary human beings answersuch questions as lsquowho are wersquo lsquowhat are our relations with each otherrsquo lsquowhatare our relations with the worldrsquo The imagined qualities attributed to thepeople constituting a collectivity and the qualities attributed to the world areintricately connected to the social structure For example it is only when peoplestart to see other human beings and their nature in terms of their functions andutilities (as lsquothingsrsquo) that a capitalist society is possible Therefore the creativeimaginary is constitutive of social practice In this sense Castoriadis talks of the


imaginary as being more real than the real In turn the signs that constitute thesymbolic system ndash even though the latter has its own logic and history whichare relatively independent from the imaginary and the real ndash are chosen (but notin a conscious way) by creative human beings Thanks to the goal-de ningnature of the imaginary symbols just like the imaginary that is their primarysource can intervene in the working of institutions can rede ne their substan-tive aims or be indifferent to these aims Hence the symbolic system constitutesa reality of its own not totally subservient to the reproduction of relations ofdomination (lsquothe realrsquo in Castoriadisrsquo sense)

The differences and frictions between these three registers (the imaginary thesymbolic and the real) create a potential for shifts in the imaginary throughradical imagination of individuals7 However not every imagination can produceshifts in the imaginary thereby attain the status of an lsquoimaginary social signi -cationrsquo and impact on the organization of symbols and social relations For suchimpact institution of imagination and its consequent socialization is necessaryModifying Castoriadisrsquo scheme for the purposes of this paper I would like tosuggest that the radical imagination tends to lead to radical practice in twoinstances rst when the gap between the imaginary and the real widens andsecond when the sharpened contradictions in the real overlap with divisions inthe symbolic

In Turkey the in uence of world capitalism and the modernization projectsof the local eacutelites have created institutions and relations (the real) that radicallydiffer from the moral order envisioned by Islam (the imaginary) they have intro-duced objectifying relations (those of class) among religious populations whichcontradicts what is expected from human bonds within a religious frameworkThe frustration caused by the growing distance between the real and the imagin-ary affects not only the relation between the religious populations and theregime but also the internal relations of Islamists As I shall demonstrate belowthe ideal of ummah (Islamic community) so much cherished by Islamism is farfrom re ecting the relations of Islamist poor and Islamist rich Religious peoplehowever insist on imagining their internal relations and their relations with theworld in Islamic terms Yet the penetration of the new objecti ed relationssooner or later makes their presence felt in varying degrees for different groupsand individuals This is when the religious imaginary has to be reinterpretedthrough radical imagination ndash lest it recede into defence or be given up Thesediscrepancies between the imaginary and the real and the ensuing space forradical imagination create potentials for counter-hegemonic struggle againstthe system and intra-hegemonic strife within Islamism

The second dimension the coincidence between divisions in the real and divisions in the symbolic concerns the widening gap between social groups inthe modern world8 Societies are divided into dominant and exploited classesand into rulers and the ruled9 Various discourses whether democratic social-ist Islamist or nationalist act as bridges between groups that share unequally inpower constructing coherence in a contradictory society and making it possiblefor subalterns to negotiate the terms of their domination When these groups do


not share a symbolic realm or share one only in a weak manner there is a greaterchance of hostility and less opportunity for negotiation This is especially per-tinent to and visible in contemporary Islamic societies where the eacutelite and themasses talk of the world and symbolize their relations with it in different (non-religious vs religious) terms and through the lenses of different meaningsystems they are divided not only by class but also by the naturalized use ofdifferent symbolic systems10

The Islamist print

The claims put forth in this paper are based on a reading from December 1998to March 1999 of the prominent Islamist newspapers in Turkey namely MilliGazete Yeni ordf afak and Akit I also reviewed the weekly newspaper Selam andjournals such as Haksoumlz and Cuma The time frame marks the national electioncampaigns when these newspapers and journals featured heated debates on thenature of the Islamist movement in general and the Islamist party in particularIn my daily readings of the three main Islamist newspapers during these vemonths I paid special attention to the construction of events in news articlesthe debates between columnists and letters to the editor and to columnists

The print media are crucial to Islamist movements in Turkey Activists andfollowers participate in collective readings in coffee houses dormitories and civilorganizations While these readings circulate ideas beyond the printed pagethey also create intellectual space for the popular negotiation of the meaninggenerated in Islamist print11 Four institutional matrices gure prominently inthis meaning creation Islamic capital religious communities the legal Islamistparty and radical Islamist organizations Islamic capital has become a consider-able force in Turkey after the liberalization of the economy in the 1980sWhereas Turkish capitalism was based on the accumulation of capital throughheavy state support and intervention before the 1980s the global neo-liberaltrend made it possible for the provincial eacutelite to transform their savings intoinvestment An important portion of the provincial eacutelite combined their fundsto form joint-stock companies in order to be able to compete with the hugemonopolies created by the republican bureaucracy The aggregation of thesedispersed funds was facilitated by a rhetoric emphasizing the need for the unityof believers against the nationalist and secularist bourgeoisie which was the arte-fact of the regime The rms that were thus brought into being were later to beunited in an association MUumlSmiddotIAD The increasing strength of this associationand the KOBmiddotIs (small and medium sized enterprises) within the movement canbe traced throughout the discussions in the Islamist press

The religious communities in uence Islamist press either through formingtheir own newspapers and journals or through supplying newspapers withcolumnists The dissolution of traditional religious orders in the 1920s had chan-nelled the mystic inclinations within Islam to organize as underground religiouscommunities some of which had ties with old orders such as the Nakshibendi


order but some of which were completely new and independent from oldorders12 Even though the state was hostile to these new communities from thebeginning it developed manipulative relations with them rst against thesocialist wave of the 1960s and the 1970s ndash where religious people joined the fascists in clashes with the revolutionary left ndash then against the radicalization ofreligion after the 1980s Certain communities (eg the ImiddotsmailagAEliga community)de ned themselves with the Islamist movement and resisted this latter manipu-lation Others like the Imiddotskenderpaordm a community accommodated a more exibleapproach and sided with different parties at different moments More interest-ingly others including the Fethullah Guumllen community acted as a bulwarkagainst the populist and revolutionary interpretations of Islam but used the cultural-political space opened by the manipulative strategy of the state for non-confrontational Islamicization of society and state

The Islamist party initiated as a party of the religiously conservativeprovinces and villages went through a metamorphosis at the end of the 1970saccompanying the radicalization of Islam worldwide Upon the retreat of theradical left following the 1980 coup drsquoeacutetat in Turkey and the collapse of statesocialism worldwide the recently radicalized ideological line of the party (theWelfare Party) became the most attractive choice for subaltern populations as aresult of which the main support base of the party shifted from the conservativeprovinces to urban poor areas in metropolitan centres and to Kurdish regions13

The party adopted an anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian rhetoric in order toappeal to these populations a rhetoric which was not sufficiently internalizedand systematically articulated as we shall see below The revolutionary Islamistgroups on the other hand were more open and resolute in their attacks againstcapitalism Even though their anti-capitalism did not become a popular electoraloption their criticisms of the Islamist party and Islamic capital created an anti-capitalist ideological atmosphere that pushed the party to come to terms withcapitalism The Turkish state could not tolerate even this restricted criticism ofcapitalism and secularist bureaucracy and the party was closed down in 1998When it opened again with a different name (the Virtue Party) its political andeconomic programme was much milder and more conciliatory Since a nation-wide campaign against Islamism was in place after the coup in 1997 the closingdown of the Welfare Party and the ideological wavering of the new party didnot favour the small religious revolutionary groups themselves under severescrutiny in this period14

Due to the diversity in the movement the Islamist press is the home for a widerange of (frequently diverging) opinions Whereas Yeni ordf afak is a forum of themore liberal wing within the Islamist movement Akit Selam and Haksoumlz areexamples of radical Islamist print Yeni ordf afak ndash linked to the Albayrak group of rms one of the prominent religious companies ndash is read more by the educatedand middle-class sectors of the Islamic population Its columnists consist ofliberal as well as Islamist intellectuals and journalists on the one hand andmembers of eacutelite religious orders (such as Erenkoumly and Imiddotskenderpaordm a communitiesof the Nakshi order) on the other The readership of Akit differs remarkably


tending to comprise uneducated andor working populations together with moreconservative sectors within merchants and shopkeepers Akit does not have asmuch economic and political institutional support as Milli Gazete Zaman andYeni ordf afak but the activism of its audience renders it widely in uential Despiteits radicalism it differs from the publications of radical groups (Haksoumlz andSelam) in that it carries strong traces from the conservative past of the Islamistmovement Milli Gazete situated midway between these two poles is the semi-official daily paper of the Islamist party (formerly the Welfare Party now theVirtue Party) and constitutes the ideological lsquocentrersquo of the movement Some ofits authors are independent Islamist intellectuals some independent mystics andsome members of religious communities such as the ImiddotsmailagAEliga community Cumaon the other hand is a journal open to different voices within the Islamist move-ment but is more sympathetic to the centre and to radicals than to liberals Selamand Haksoumlz have restricted audiences mainly university youth and radical intel-ligentsia They are related to groups with revolutionary ideas All of these Islamistnewspapers and journals differ from Zaman a mainstream newspaper withIslamic references which I also analysed in the same period This newspaper islinked with the Fethullah Guumllen community which has many representatives ininstitutions such as the police the army and (national and transnational) publiceducation15 Zaman is an exemplary site of the discourse of those groups that Icall lsquoIslamic mainstreamersrsquo Islamic mainstreamers defend the current oli-garchic capitalist structure of the Turkish regime and demand Islamicization ofthe system without thorough structural transformation on economic and politi-cal fronts

Two dimensions of Islamist meaning construction

My reading of the Islamist press foregrounds two elements indispensable for athorough insight into Islamism The rst of these is the religious recon gura-tion of populism As will be seen below the Islamist transformation of populistpolitics calls for a more culturally oriented understanding of counter-hegemonyand especially of Islamism as an instance of counter-hegemony Second wide-spread internal con ict within this populist counter-hegemony necessitates amodel that can incorporate intra-hegemonic struggle in the conceptualizationof Islamism in particular and of social movements in general

The novelty and speci city of religio-moral populism

The popular rhetoric of Islamist symbolic representation in Turkey presents thedominant groups as primarily composed of oligopolistic capital and civil andmilitary bureaucracy (together constituting lsquothe oligarchyrsquo) with the dominantmedia and public intellectuals serving as their props The same rhetoric charac-terizes the dominant groups also as lsquothe happy minorityrsquo What is not explained


by purely civilizational and cultural explanations of Islamist movements is thisinsistence on the opposition between the exploited and the exploiters the domi-nated and the rulers If Islamism was solely or primarily a search for iden-titymeaning or an attack of tradition against modernity this opposition wouldnot be so salient in its discourse

This requires an interpretation of Islamism as a form of populism thoughsome quali cations are necessary First of all Islamist populism has to be dis-tinguished from the populism of rulers and states (Peronist populism Kemalistpopulism etc) in that it is not populism from above envisioning undifferenti-ated masses whose interests are assumed to be the one and the same with stateand (national) capital Second Islamist populism is not another variant of clien-telist lsquopopulismrsquo based on patronage politics Many political parties in Turkeyand in the Third World engage in this kind of lsquopopulismrsquo What differentiatesIslamist populism is its consistent redistribution of resources from dominantgroups to subordinate groups This is exempli ed by the obvious deteriorationof services in upper-middle-class districts and the parallel amelioration ofservices and infra-structure in subaltern districts and neighbourhoods duringthe local governments of the Islamist party Also during the short period whenthe Islamist party led a coalition government certain sectors of the workingclasses received wage rises unencountered after the liberalization of the Turkisheconomy following the 1980 coup while the pro t rent and interest gains of bigbusiness were brought under control This aggressive redistribution togetherwith the centrality of populist discourse in contemporary Islamism casts a doubton approaches that reduce the populism of Islamism in Turkey to simple elec-tion-time pragmatism and clientelism (Ak otilde nc otilde 1999 Heper 1997)

Since the attributes of Islamism mentioned above echo the characteristics ofsocialist populisms many scholars have argued that Islamism is simply an heirto left-wing populism or nationalism (Burke 1998) While this may be partiallycorrect it does not acknowledge the radical novelty of Islamism namely the newemphasis on faith and morals This religious dimension of the new populismleads to a radically different construct of lsquothe peoplersquo comprising not only theexploited and excluded but also the faithful and moral Islamists often playfullyargue that lsquothe representatives of Hakk [God]rsquo and lsquothe representatives of Halk[the people]rsquo have converged The exploiters and the faithless are likewisedeemed to be of the same breed Consequently the con ict between labour andcapital is made sense of in religious terms as a re-staging of the eternal con ictbetween believers and heathens

I know that you turn the individual the family and society into lsquoswallowablemorselsrsquo through dismantling them Even if you seem to be Suret-i Hak[a person who appears to be religious and just] your devilry is gushing outfrom your paccedilas [lower parts of the trouser] [In you] I recognize the enemyof human enemy of nature enemy of labor enemy of faith extortioner from[your] lack of conscience no matter what [your] dress is I know thechanging meaning of Hak [Right] and Justice in your language and I donrsquot


believe you In the building site of tomorrow workers are digging yourgraves with their blue overalls Workers without the trace of idols on theirforeheads They recognize themselves by refusing to recognize you16

(Muumlrsel Soumlnmez Selam 4 February 1999 emphases added)

These imagined equivalences between the oppressors and the faithless andbetween the moral and the oppressed have slowly become common sense duringthe 1980s and the 1990s at least for the (Islamic orthodox) Suumlnni populationFor example shantytown people interviewed during the election period haveinterpreted the closing down of religious schools as an attack against the edu-cation rights of the poor (Milliyet 23 January 1999) This imagined equivalenceresults from discursive play on the divided lsquosymbolicrsquo of Turkish society andalso reinforces even naturalizes the partial correspondence between the faultlines in the symbolic (systems of signs dominated by the deployment of religiousimages catch-phrases rituals vs those marked by the prepondarance of non-religious ones) with clefts in the lsquorealrsquo (the dominant bloc vs the popularsectors) The above demonstrates both the continuity of Islamism with theIslamic tradition where the oppressors are frequently imagined as heathens orhypocrite Muslims and the deployment of aspects of this tradition with the par-ticular aim of responding to capitalist modernity

In addition the Turkish phrases employed by the Islamists themselves createambiguities Halk (the people) is sometimes used as interchangeable with milletEven though millet is generally translated as lsquonationrsquo in Islamist discourse itimplies a community of believers within clearly de ned administrative bound-aries ndash a legacy of the Ottoman system based on the division between religiouscommunities within the borders of the Empire In other instances the emanci-pation of labour unites with the emancipation of believers The leader of themovement (Necmettin Erbakan) becomes an ordinary lsquoman who has devotedhimself to the liberation of his nation of which he considers himself to be a partrsquoas against lsquothose who establish a sultanate over labor and freedomrsquo (middotIsmailBak otilde rhan Milli Gazete 25 March 1999 emphases added) The millet of Islamistdiscourse thus becomes an ambiguous and therefore potentially contentiousterm with multiple connotations including nation people class and religiouscommunity This further underlines how the populism of Islamic discourse isembedded in a religious framework

Even though such a symbolic system imposes some consequential restric-tions on the construction of the people (the exclusion of religious and sect17

minorities from this construct) it is nevertheless not a de cient form of oppo-sition when compared with older populisms (nationalist and socialist) Thelatter were more open to different sections of the subaltern in theory But whenit came to the practical formation of counter-hegemony leftists furtherexcluded the (religious) sectors already excluded by the dominant (Western)interpretation of modernity labelling them as obscurantists reactionaries etcIn an era when rationalism and Eurocentric developmentalism are on theretreat religious populism clearly demonstrates its advantages over old-style


(secularist) socialism Therefore the moralist populism of Islamism has to beseen as a novel articulation with its speci c strengths and weaknesses ratherthan as a de cient substitute for nationalism or socialism

Intra-hegemonic struggle

I noted above that the reduction of Islamist populism to petit bourgeois populismis another weakness of the (neo-Marxist) political economy approach What thelatter can predict is at most compassion towards working classes and the poorand their passive inclusion in the movement accompanied by resentment ofconspicuous consumption and over-exploitation by the rich (Fischer 1982)Whereas the attitudes of one portion of the intelligentsia of the Islamist move-ment are exactly restricted to these points on matters concerning poverty thereis erce debate among Islamists about where the poor and the rich stand in themovement and in Muslim life in general

A frequent intellectual move among Islamists which would be alien to a petitbourgeois movement is the construction of the poor as the lsquorealrsquo Muslims andthe opposition of their (instead of the middle classesrsquo) Islam to the Islam of therich

some [of the rich] are laicistsome Islamisttheir worldviews irreconcil-ablequite separatebut they are in alliance against the beggartheir atti-tudes [regarding the beggar] are just the samesome are drunkard f ers[censure in text] some hajji And in fact what goes along between themis not a religious ght Only [a ght over] shares and pro ts The commer-cial ght of this in delesque materialism is executed through the abuse ofthe faith and religion of we the poor We the penniless are incorrigiblebefore the end of time we took religion and faith in earnest we are not jokingwe really believed

(Murat Kapk otilde ner Akit 23 December 1999 emphases added)

Islamic practices and rituals are constructed as essential parts of the cultureof the poor distinguished from and threatening dominant culture

We force life with our shoulders and with minds nourished in Kurrsquoan coursesteravih prayers [communal prayers performed in the holy month ofRamadan] soccer games Muumlsluumlm [Muumlsluumlm Guumlrses a musician popularamong the urban poor] concerts and kung-fu salons Nothing is able todeceive us [W]ith our unending intelligence with our spontaneous anduntrained intelligence we undermine lsquothe white mansionsrsquo lsquoCivilizationrsquo issquirming on feather pillows Squirming is the hand that is reaching out forour bread milk wheat and even for our gullet

(middotIdris Oumlzyol18 Yeni ordf afak 7 March 1999)

Radical papers contend that even when the rich engage in Islamic rituals theymutate religious meaning and form lsquoDespite the mutant iftar [meal that breaks


onersquos fast] dinners of some communities and foundations Ramadan continueswith its true meaning among the people among the poor in iftar tentsrsquo (SelamJanuary 1999 emphasis added)

Many Islamists who do not want to see Islam as a poor peoplersquos movementresist this strong resentment and class hatred Islam according to them has tobe the culture and civilization of the city centres but lsquotodayrsquos Muslims are striv-ing to spread religion from shantytowns ghettos villages and provinces to bigcentersrsquo (Mehmet Sevket Eygi Milli Gazete 30 January 1999) These Islamistsof the lsquobig traditionrsquo also believe that the poor are not responsible for their owncondition (as opposed to the capitalist belief in individual success) so the non-poor are responsible for solving their problems Nevertheless this does not givethe poor the right to dominate the Islamic movement and lsquoprovincializersquo andgecekondula ordm totildermak [transform into a shantytown movement] it This ideologi-cal confrontation has its counterpart in cultural and political practice as someIslamists organize in urban poor areas while others construct Islamic residencesaimed exclusively at the religious eacutelite

While the distaste for conspicuous consumption and glori cation of the life-styles of the poor have been noted by the political economy approach and inter-preted as the reaction of a tradition-bound petite bourgeoisie my data suggest thatmuch more is at stake In line with the hermeneutic tradition we could assertthat this critique arises from the meaning system itself We see the irreducibil-ity of this critique in its frequent attacks against a pure market system that corrupts Muslimsrsquo beliefs The political economy approach is put into questionhere also following its own lsquoclassrsquo criteria What we encounter in many Islamistintellectuals is not a glori cation of the poor from a distance but an identi -cation with them Furthermore voices and activities of the lsquopoorrsquo (or represen-tatives of the poor) within the movement enrage the lsquonon-poorrsquo of themovement There is a class struggle within not noted by those who reduceIslamism to petit bourgeois reaction or petit bourgeois populism

From meaning construction to material confrontation

Do their critical takes on the political regime of Turkey lead Islamists toaffirm negotiate or confront capitalism Various Islamist evaluations of theaspects of Turkish capitalism converge on some points such as opposing inter-est and rent objecting to monopoly capital and supporting KOBImiddots (small andmedium-sized enterprises) Whereas these commonalities have led manyscholars to portray a univocal Islamist stance on capitalism I believe thatIslamistsrsquo conflicts on several issues demand a typology differentiatingbetween several strands Risking over-simplification we can divide theIslamist stance in Turkey into three categories (1) proponents of a moral capi-talism (2) proponents of an alternative capitalism (3) and those who morallyoppose capitalism (henceforth-designated moral capitalists alternative capi-talists moral anti-capitalists)19


Moral capitalism

Currently this is the dominant economic ideology among the Islamists ofTurkey Proponents of moral capitalism believe in the virtues of the free marketbut acknowledge the social problems it causes Instead of laying the greatestemphasis on regulating or socializing the market as Western social democratsdo they focus more on lifestyles and consumption patterns (like Islamists else-where) If the well-to-do ful lled their religious duties of paying the zekat [alms]and avoiding luxury consumption and valued communal solidarity above pro tsome argue Turkeyrsquos problems of unemployment and poverty would be largelysolved (Tahsin S otilde nav Milli Gazete 9 January 1999) Moral capitalists frequentlyencourage Islamist capitalists to prioritize religiouspolitical tasks over expan-sion and pro t They harshly criticize the proponents of lsquoalternative capitalismrsquosince these latter recommend that Islamic capital engage in relation with anti-Islamic and zalim (oppressive) forces (like the US and Israel) if it is so requiredby economic logic (Ahmet Varol Akit 11 February 1999 criticizing Abdurrah-man Dilipak) Alongside these religiousmoral measures moral capitalists alsorecognize the need for some redistributive mechanisms that will balance thegoals of accumulation of capital and social justice

The most important thing to be noted about advocates of moral capitalism isthat they privilege morality religion community and ummah over economicprosperity and development which makes them suspicious about the merits offree market economy despite their allegiance to the latter in principle They donot challenge the market but are disturbed by the type of society and personal-ity created by the market which puts them in a state of ambivalence they praisethe market as the best economic option yet curse it for its consequences20

Alternative capitalism

Some Islamists have a vision of an economy which functions better than Turkishcapitalism ndash the latter being an economicpolitical order based on quite a strongoligarchy of bureaucrats generals and capitalists an economy increasingly basedmore on rent and interest rather than production This camp of Islamists en-visions a more liberal capitalism where bureaucrats and a few secular business-men do not control all the economy Even though their ideal state does notinterfere much with the economy the Muslim bourgeoisie itself is supposed torun the latter in a more solidaristic way Despite the fact that this would implycaring more for the workers and lower classes just as in lsquomoral capitalismrsquo thelogic behind this solidarity is expansion pro t and stronger competition withthe global bourgeoisie rather than social justice based on the principles of theKurrsquoan Actually when the issue at hand is economy these people speak the lan-guage of impersonal market forces and cold rationality more than the spirituallanguage of moral capitalists Religion and morality are seen under a positivelight because it is believed that cadres moulded with Islam will be more efficient


than cadres who lack faith (quite a Protestant approach to religion) Less thansurprisingly most of the proponents of this model are Islamic businessmen andIslamic economists though some of the prominent intellectuals of Islamism arealso in this camp

Alternative capitalists are very cautious about anti-Westernism Ali Bayra-mogAElig lu the president of MUumlSmiddotIAD warns the Muslim population that this is alsquowar of brand names before a war of civilizationsrsquo In a recent popular pro-gramme broadcast on a secularist TV channel (Kanal D Fatih Altayl otilde One onOne 2 April 2001) Ali BayramogAElig lu has gone as far as saying lsquocapital cannot beclassi ed as pious and irreligious The objective of capital is making pro trsquo Thisapproach playing down the symbolic differences between the religious and theirreligious contradicts with the earlier practice of Islamic capital which wasitself accumulated by means of grand ideological promises During the periodwhen the presidents and organizers of religious joint-stock companies weredemanding that religious people donate their savings they used to promise themthat there would be no exploitation in their rms that they would not engagein types of business deemed illegal in Islamic law and that the growth of Islamicbusiness associations would nally give birth to an Islamic society The Islamic rms thus begotten could not live up to these ideals in later practice First someof them (such as the rms owned by Enver Oumlren leader of the I ordm otildekccedilotilde community)started making use of the interest banking system ndash to which they were supposedto provide an alternative via an Islamic banking system ndash in mediated waysThen the names of others got involved in large-scale frauds What is morealmost all of them gradually gave up supporting the dreams of an Islamic societythat would be totally different from capitalist society When pro t becomes the rst and foremost aim it becomes obligatory that one make peace with thesystem and try to ensure the best conditions for the proliferation of marketsThis is the current inclination of religious businessmen and alternative capital-ists who have recently been discussing whether the label lsquoIslamistrsquo with itsconnotations of social struggle and revolution is really appropriate for thereligious movement in Turkey

Although the alternative capitalistic outlook is represented by quite a smallnumber of people when compared to the moral capitalistic outlook some of thewriting on Islamism in Turkey has focused on the former taking it as the realIslamic line As a result Islamism has been interpreted as the ideology of therising provincial bourgeoisie ( ordf en 1995) The reason for this misplaced focus isthe institutional strength of alternative capitalists Islamic newspapers evenradical ones get most of their nancial support from Islamic businessmensources they cannot abandon given their already shaky position under the ruleof a hostile state In spite of this indirect control Islamic papers and journalsabound with criticisms of the liberalizing Muslim bourgeoisie and intellectualstheir growing disrespect for the rights of labour and the poor and their increas-ing conspicuous consumption However the advocates of alternative capitalismhave gathered enough institutional strength to disregard these criticisms andwalk their own way To the degree that this sub-current within Islamism


crystallizes into an independent line it will be interesting to observe whetherthe rationalized religion of alternative capitalists will constitute a separateimaginary ndash as it might as well simply invigorate the rei ed capitalist imaginarythrough spiritual legitimacy

Moral anti-capitalism

The moral anti-capitalists may not number many but they are still crucial atleast since they represent a perspective towards which moral capitalists mightshift as their disillusionment with capitalism (and with the liberalizing Islamicparty) grows Moral anti-capitalists think that capitalism is a system that is andde nitely will be incapable of ful lling the basic (religiouslymorally de ned)human needs

Is capitalism really suitable to human creation [fotildetrat] Are the aliments andcommodities that are produced now for peoplersquos needs or for the pro t ofsome Are equal sharing and the protection of the oppressed among the goalsof capitalism Capitalism just like a one-eyed deccal [the Islamic equival-ent of the Anti-Christ] who sees only this world is successful in draggingpeople but does not see that its end has come Everybody is obliged to seethat moral approaches which put matter in its proper place through seeing itas a means which state that the aim of human life is the recognition andworship of Allah will save humans from every kind of destruction and lackof satisfaction(Halil middotIbrahim TuumltuumlncuumlogAElig lu Milli Gazete 9 January 1999 emphases added)

In some this anti-capitalist attitude is channelled by a patrimonial-eacutetatistideology which dates from the Ottoman period Devlet Baba [paternal state] hasthe moral duty to cleanse capital from the lsquodirt rust and theftrsquo it has accumu-lated Till the day it does so capital is the real threat in Turkey In others wesee a new-left pro-civil society approach including actions such as forcingcapital to behave in moral and non-exploitative ways by organizing consumerassociations Still others list capital under the oppressive forces that are theenemy of Islam for good and have to be swept away by using revolutionarymeasures While it is possible that some of these discomforts with capitalismcould be dealt with within the boundaries of an anti-monopolistic capitalism itis highly likely that the majority of the moral drawbacks will persist as long asindividual interest prevails in human relations

What might be even more telling than the self-professed anti-capitalism ofsome Islamists is the way certain Islamists seem to articulate a strict anti-capitalism and then shy away from it One of the primary reasons for this unde-cided attitude as mentioned above is the nancial ties of the Islamist movementwith the rising provincial bourgeoisie The following passage problematicbecause of its incoherence is cited here because it exempli es this ambiguousanti-capitalist criticism


I was seeing it in all its openness Wherever there is money there is solidarityservice (to religion and belief ) there is lsquoHuzur Islamdarsquo [Peace is in Islam apopular slogan of the 1980s and 1990s] On the other hand there is alongsidethe troubles of life bread shelter wood and coal the sincere torment of lsquoArewe [the poor] considered Muslims We a handful of people cannot cometogetherrsquo I wonrsquot say that a capitalist has no religion and no belief butthis is certain the people with money no matter how oppositional theirreligion sect temperament are in true alliance [A complete alliance] againstthose without money whatever the lattersrsquo religion and belief We hopethat [in the future] we can talk about sincere men of belief like Hulusi andKemal who are true believers and not [oppressive] wealthy men [the colum-nist has added the last sentence to the text as a footnote]

(Murat Kapkotilde ner Akit 23 December 1998)

The above hesitation and confusion in attacking capital Muslim and lsquoin delrsquoalike the lsquobutsrsquo the cautions and nally lsquoexceptionsrsquo added to the anti-capitalistic argument are characteristic of more than a handful of Islamists Thisstructure of feelings against capital and capitalism can turn into a more thoroughcritique if pertinent political conditions and a fostering ideological climate arise

The correct moral stance towards capitalism is not only an issue debatedamong intellectuals The commodi cation of human relations is a centralconcern for the readership of the Islamist press Below are selections from aletter from a reader who is disturbed by the bourgeoisi cation of his father Heintroduces the letter with certain hadiths (words of the prophet) sanctifyingmaterial pursuit but then goes on to express his doubts about the nature of capi-talist everyday life

But since commercial life rests on competition it causes a boost in the personrsquosgreed to earn As a result of this [the personrsquos] observance of the boundariesof helal [religiously legitimate] and haram [religiously forbidden] decrease Before engaging in commercial life my father was a man making efforts toserve Islam Now he has become a man thinking about where to buy whichproducts how to pay his checks and bills following money markets

(Akit 6 May 1999)

The fotildeqh (Islamic jurisprudence) columnist of the newspaper answers this letterby recon rming the religiously legitimate nature of the pursuit of pro t under-lining its proper forms The anti-capitalist doubts in the letter are negatedthrough the authority of a learned Muslim In this letter and in the columnistrsquosresponse to it we see how reactions against commodi cation common in anysetting are repeated and displaced in a particularly Muslim context What wewitness here is the friction between rei ed-rationalist and religious ways ofimagining onersquos relation with nance and money21

Economic issues might in the near future become lines of demarcation amongthe Islamists There are already some signs of such a development Islamicholding company owners and managers have started to ght publicly for markets


(Milliyet 4 February 1999) Con ict between religious capital and religiouslabour unions is slowly starting to be added to this more publicized ghtRecently (autumn 2000) the religious workers of one of the major Islamic holdings (Yimpaordm ) went on strike The administrators responded by bringingworkers from another city The local branch of Hak-middotI ordm the confederation ofreligious workers argued that the incoming workers were incited to attack thestrikers wounding several of them As companies trusted in religious circlestreat their workers just like any other capitalist company over-exploiting themand violently breaking their strikes there is a likelihood that more and moreIslamists will agree with Murat Kapkotilde ner quoted above lsquono matter how oppo-sitional their religion the people with money are in true alliance againstthose without moneyrsquo To the degree that neo-liberal globalization proceeds byundermining local communities and moral codes in Turkey forcing capitaliststo act with strict competitive logic to the detriment of other motives it is pos-sible that certain borderline moral capitalists might join moral anti-capitalists asthey lose hope of preserving any dignity under the sway of capital

The Islamic ideal of justice and the critique of capitalism

This section of the paper focuses on the ways justice is deployed in Islamic dis-course for justice is the positive content of the moral critique of capitalism TheIslamist alternative to capitalism is imagined on the basis of the ideal of justiceTurkish Islamists very frequently point out the imbalances of wealth (one of theprimary indices they use in order to show the degree to which Turkey is anunjust society) and not only in articles or commentaries lsquoInjusticersquo evenbecomes lsquonewsrsquo even on the front pages of their newspapers As one mightexpect they attribute this injustice to alienation from Islam They furthercontend that only the charity of Islam keeps people from starvation in contem-porary Turkey All Islamists see justice not only as a good solution to the extremeinequalities created by the system but also as the foundation stone of IslamHowever the ways Islamists situate justice in theology and their speci c takeson what justice is vary considerably It is through the documentation of thesedifferences that I propose to lay bare the intra-hegemonic struggle withinIslamism

As mentioned above the symbolic system has a life of its own Though thesuppression of the Islamic imaginary by the republic has radicalized Islamcertain inherited symbols have restricted the potentials for confrontation withthe state The lsquocircle of justicersquo and lsquothe paternal statersquo frequently deployed byIslamists are primary examples of these conservative symbols inherited from thepre-republican past The authors and politicians who emphasize the tradition ofthe Ottoman Empire in de ning their ideal of justice refer to the state more thanto religion For example some see a fair sharing of all resources as a requirementfor a strong army state and bureaucracy (Nazif GuumlrdogAElig an Yeni ordf afak 14 March1999) This reading of justice is based on the notion of lsquocircle of justicersquo ndash central


to the rhetoric of state traditions of Near Eastern empires ndash which sees balancebetween social groups as the primary prop of state strength (middotInalc otilde k 1989)Alternatively and more commonly the idea of Devlet Baba (lsquothe paternal statersquo)is invoked a catch phrase employed by all parties across the political spectrumand one that is very widely accepted in public and entrenched in tradition Butwhereas conservative parties more generally make use of authoritarian conno-tations of this phrase (a father both provides and punishes) the Islamic partyand its politicians emphasize the lsquoprovidingrsquo dimension of being a father(Numan Kurtulmu ordm the president of the Istanbul branch of the Virtue PartyMilli Gazete 28 January 1999) The people targeted by party leaders seem torecognize this role to some degree A shantytown dweller interviewed during theelection period for instance de nes the party as lsquothe Paternal State in the shantytownsrsquo to a journalist conducting research in poor neighbourhoods (Mil-liyet 22 January 1999)

However most discourse on justice comes from Islamic sources rather thanstate ideologies Based on theology and history most Islamists assert that socialjustice is the dictate of religion For some justice is more pragmatic than an endin itself

Zekat [alms] is a worship that removes all animosity toward property consol-idates respect of property and protects wealth It is for this reason that ourProphet has ordered thus lsquoTake your possessions within a fortress by givingzekatrsquo How tersely does this hadith point out the truth that class conscious-ness likely to emerge in societies where rich and poor are not coalesced canturn into anarchy and cause plunder

(A R otilde za Demircan Akit December 1998)

Yet even when such pragmatism exists the ultimate goal is creating a societywithout poor people

Throughout history in societies where Islam has been lived social equilib-rium has been obtained by zekat and sadaka Thanks to these nancialworships poverty has been abolished in the Islamic society so much so thatthere have been times when there were no poor to receive zekat

(Mustafa Keskin Cuma 1ndash7 January 1999)

Whereas the former pragmatism and legitimation of inequality are intrinsicparts of the Islam propagated by the Turkish state the latter vision (the will tobuild a society without poor people) is unique to Islamists Some conservativesfollow the interpretation of state Islam and believe that since inequalities existthey are God given (not to be challenged outside the boundaries of zekat) butradicals see these as a test which Allah puts Muslims through a sin and an evilwhich they have to erase from the face of the earth

The majority of Islamists foreground the needs of the poor and the needywhen discussing social justice rather than those of lsquosocietyrsquo as a totality In factaccording to a common interpretation zekat is not charity but a return of thethings to which the poor have rights as creatures of Allah lsquoIn the possessions


that Allah has given us resides the right of others the needy the oppressed andall Muslim poor Turning into a capitalist by piling wealth like Karun doesnrsquotbecome those who believe in Allahrsquo (Oumlmer SerdarogAElig lu Akit 5 January 1999)Islamists support their call for social justice also by using certain collectivistayets (couplets of the Kurrsquoan) and hadiths (sayings of the prophet) such aslsquoMuslims hold three things in common water herb rersquo This hadith is inter-preted to mean that believers should have collective ownership of the basicnecessities of life

When these abstract ideas are translated into social prescriptions what isdemanded is the sharing of property (not through state regulation but throughthe consent of believers) until poverty disappears (Hami A DogAElig an Cuma 1ndash7January 1999) More frequent is a vague portrayal of an Islamic society in con-trast to capitalist society without any elaborate models of an Islamic welfarestate lsquoThe accumulation of wealth in one hand due to the structure of the capi-talist system oppresses the poor Would these happen if Islam had reignedIslam regulates the distribution of wealth among people and prevents the for-mation of uccedilurum [precipice]rsquo (Oumlmer SerdarogAElig lu Akit)

The Just Order as an arrest of the oating signi er

The Islamic discourse on justice (and the discourse on equality which is bothits corollary and its presupposition) outlined above can be seen as a relativelyopen text the floating meaning of which is fixed in certain ways under certainsituations The Just Order the socio-economic programme of the bannedWelfare Party and the cornerstone of its propaganda is a good model of thisfixation The Just Order promised a society free of interest exploitationmonopolies unemployment a society which would be made possible throughregulation of the market by the state and by lsquocommunities of moralityrsquo formedby contract (a compromise between the ideal Islamic order outlined above anda classical welfare state) The Just Order was always encountered with sus-picion among Islamists Liberal pro-capitalist Islamists opposed it fiercelybecause of its utopian socialist character The majority of Islamists praised itfor its emphasis on justice but raised doubts about its feasibility Radicals sawit as just one of those examples of centrist party jargon incorporating elementsfrom the ideal Islamic order but not expressing it publicly out of fear of in-furiating the state The Virtue Party replaced the promise of the Just Order bythe promise of free market economy and more transparent forms of privatiza-tion (Milliyet 5 March 1999) However the party retained its moral populistdiscourse while working in the shantytowns and addressing unions These tac-tical swings and uncertainties led many of the partyrsquos ideologues themselves towarn the party that the result would be a loss of mass support (A HaydarKoumlksal Milli Gazete 29 December 1998 Fahrettin Guumln Milli Gazete 12 April1999) In the following a columnist sharply critiques the post-28 Februaryparty


When the Virtue Party lays claim to the spirit of Oumlzal [former president ini-tiator of neo-liberalism in Turkey] it will have channeled the strength andpower it has taken from the ghettos to those [liberals] who have made ourcountry into a land of ghettos The Oumlzalist turn of the Virtue Party is atreachery against the tradition of lsquojust orderrsquo The Virtue Party shouldleave the spirit of Ozalism and return to the spirit of the millet

(Atilla Oumlzduumlr Akit 11 March 1999 emphases added)

While the increasing oppression of the regime and the pragmatism of theparty have moved it away from even the restricted utopia of the Just Orderjustice and equality continue to be points of concern in Islamism The open-ness of Islamic discourse (and thus its potential for being fixed by models moreegalitarian than that of the Just Order) on the issue at hand can be demon-strated by the following passage in which a columnist imagines the flow of con-sciousness of a worker listening to a sermon in a Friday communal prayerduring which the preacher points to the equality among worshippers in amosque

In the mosque they [the imagined workerrsquos rentier landlord his boss a bou-tique owner from the neighborhood and him a foundry worker] all stood inthe same rows and ascended the heights of brotherhood through feeling thevanishing differences of mevki [postclass] and makam [rank] But what canyou do the short moments found in the mosque passed away He believedthat it was not that important to be equal in the mosque Wasnrsquot the crucialthing equality outside the mosque Oh one wished this brotherhoodwould never nish

(Mehmet E Kazc otilde Akit 30 March 1999)

This imaginary representation of the Islamic community is a lucid demon-stration of the radical imagination The justice that reigns in the imaginedmosque can be found nowhere in the actual (contemporary or historical) Muslimcommunity22 Therefore this representation is neither a will to preserve exist-ing Muslim communities (traditionalism) nor a desire to resurrect lost ones(essentialism) Indeed this imagination is a shift in the traditional Islamicimaginary which emphasizes the reproduction of existing relations among theummah (Mardin 1991) The growing distance between the Islamic lsquoimaginaryrsquo(the image of a just and balanced community in which inequality is restricted)and the Islamic lsquorealrsquo (the intensifying unequal secular relations between believ-ers) is bound to produce such shifts in the imaginary which may lead to anIslamic meaning system with more emphasis on equality However for suchimagination to become a social imaginary alternative to the traditional Islamicone it has to be instituted as such ndash otherwise it is bound to remain as the whimof certain individuals Yet moral anti-capitalists are institutionally disadvan-taged when compared with moral capitalists and alternative capitalists whohave to a certain degree been successful in instituting their interpretations ofIslam


Conclusion

Ideational approaches are useful in helping us recognize that new religiousmovements are an attempt to nd meaning and build a world when the worldcan no longer be understood in the old (secularist and modernist) terms In otherwords these movements cannot be seen solely as responses to socio-economicdynamics ndash neither in a Marxist nor in a neo-functionalist (Robertson 1986)sense However they are weak in theorizing fundamental changes in meaningsystems since in the last analysis they take religions as essences lsquothat are bothexclusive of others and peculiar to themselvesrsquo (Kepel 1994) They leave nospace for imaginative shifts in the imaginary Islamistsrsquo debates over justice andcapitalism clearly show that the meaning of Islam is always remaking itselfthrough the con ict of materially situated actors In analysing the role of Islamismin Turkey ideational approaches are also undermined by the salience of classand political issues in Islamist discourse while materialist approaches fail toappreciate properly the embeddedness of these issues in a moral and religiousframework The latter also overlook the fact that the religious meaning systemitself together with material divisions might be a source for political and econ-omic con icts ndash as suggested by the above discussions on poverty and justice

Castoriadisrsquo dynamic model of the imaginary makes it possible for researchon religious movements to integrate meaning systems into a theory of religionwithout reducing them to social dynamics or making them static all-explanatory tools When the imaginative agency intervening in the tensionsbetween (and within) the real and the symbolic registers of a society is neglectedthe plurality of class dynamics within social movements and active meaning cre-ation by actors risk being reduced to monolithic class forces or oppositionsbetween cultural categories In order to avoid these pitfalls I draw attention tointersections of material and ideal frictions in a radical imagination The analy-sis of the imaginative negotiation of these intersections provides a theoreticalspace for the portrayal of the novelty and speci city of religio-moral populismBringing imagination into the realm of social theorizing about religion allows usto interpret this populismrsquos peculiar articulation of class and popular discontentwith (Islamically informed) moral criticism of modernity at yet another level

Postscript

The official pressure on the Islamist movement culminating in the closing downof the Virtue Party in July 2001 has intensi ed the intra-hegemonic strife withinthe movement The proponents of alternative capitalism have now split from thecentre of the movement and are forming a centre-right religious party that aimsto be on good terms with the regime Religious alternative capitalism is becom-ing an independent political choice for the rst time in the history of TurkeyMoral anti-capitalists on the other hand have stuck to the centre party insteadof forming a party of their own because of their institutional impotency as well


as their wish to enable the movement to survive its ongoing political crisis Thepopular sectors that once supported Islamism might now support the new liberalreligious party because of the militaryrsquos and the bureaucracyrsquos obstinacy in ght-ing against Islamist populism There is a widespread popular belief that thedominant forces will never allow the Islamists to rule even when they are electedby democratic means (as was the case in the 1990s) but that they might permitliberal capitalist religious leaders to work within the system The leaders of thenew party likewise believe that the people bereft of radical transformatoryoptions will be content with seeing religious folk like themselves in economicand political power The ful lment of these popular hopes could bring about theend of an autonomous Islamic imaginary and the ultimate cultural invasion ofTurkey by the capitalist imaginary now strengthened by the wave of new (indi-vidualist) spiritualities in the realm of religion It remains to be seen whether thenew party will be able to operationalize its alternative capitalist outlook asnational politics and institute it as a popular imaginary and whether the domi-nant bloc will permit such a new religious line to rule the country

Notes

Muumlge Goumlccedilek and Howard Kimeldorf have read and helpfully criticized several drafts ofthis paper I would also like to thank George Steinmetz Martin Riesebrodt NuumlkhetSirman and two anonymous reviewers from Economy and Society for their comments andcriticisms

1 This is particularly the problem with the term lsquorevivalismrsquo offered by scholars whojusti ably want to transcend the ethnocentric assumptions of the term lsquofundamentalismrsquo(Esposito 1992) it assumes there is something out there to be revived2 Coding religious movements as the other of rationality is in itself problematic sinceIslamists do not have a single stance on the issue Some Islamists are staunch advocatesof rationality whereas others emphasize spiritual insight to the detriment of reason Yetothers argue that reason should be coupled with dogma for a religiously sound positionThose who label Islamism as pre-rational fail to notice these nuances since they con ateWestern reason with reason in general attributing irrationality to all that is outsideWestern reason For a social analysis of reason in Islam see Asad (1993)3 The secularization thesis asserts that reason will eventually replace belief and separateit from the public sphere For a critique of the thesis see Stark (1999) More recentversions of the thesis retain the claim about the ultimate desacralization of public life butadmit that reason does not necessarily replace religion in the private realm (Sommersville1998) The thesis encounters problems especially in the Third World even in thisrestricted version4 Still the interpretation of religion as lsquothe image of perfect justicersquo to the degree thatit introduces religion as a meaning system surpasses its limited interpretation as a toolof either the dominant or subjugated groups in society If one drops Horkheimerrsquosmodernizationist assumptions his insights into religion could be utilized in interpretingthe case at hand5 Among explanations focusing on class that of Michael Fischer is one of the most opento incorporating culture and symbols even though he has a tendency to account for theireffectiveness by resorting to class again For a more cultural-oriented account by the sameauthor see Fischer and Abedi (1990)6 Even though Weberrsquos (1963) characterization of Islam as the religion of warriors


immersed in conspicuous consumption recognizes variation of Islam by class it ignoreshistorical variation and contestation of meaning in given historical periods7 Castoriadis notes that individual imagination can have such an impact only in rareinstances Whereas he uses the term lsquoradical imaginationrsquo to refer both to the radical socialimaginary and to individual imagination I use it to refer only to the second in order toemphasize individual imagination and open up theoretical space for the agency of Islamistactors8 I partially owe this use of Castoriadis to ordf erif Mardin (1991) I depart from Mardinrsquosdepiction of religious politics in that I look not only at the friction between the republi-can imaginary and the Islamic imaginary but also at the friction between the Islamistimaginary and Islamist practice9 Of course such separation is never clear-cut and there are no objective criteria todetermine the exact lines of demarcation between the dominant bloc and the subordinatesectors As a matter of fact the lines are drawn by events and discourses10 Religion or culture of the masses is frequently contrasted with those of the eacutelite(Lanternari 1963 Ginzburg 1980) Even though this approach is more prominent in thestudy of non-modern settings some scholars have applied this dichotomization to analysecontemporary cases (Echghi 1980) Due to the in uence of mass education mass mediaand the diffusion of other ideological apparatuses it is very difficult to maintain the ideathat there can be a clear distinction between these two spheres Some contend in the caseof Turkey that even though the republican regime produced a gap between thediscourses and ideologies of the eacutelite and those of the masses cultural and ideologicalexchange (and even political co-operation) between the two have never really stopped(Sakall otilde ogAElig lu 1996)11 Further research is needed to nd out how the ambiguities and tensions analysedthroughout this paper are handled in the daily collective readings of the Islamist printmedia12 For the religious communities in Turkey see Ccedilak otilde r (1990)13 For the party before the 1980s see Toprak (1981) and AgAElig aogAElig ullarotilde (1982) For thepost-1980 party see Guumllalp (1999) and AkdogAElig an (2000)14 Selam a weekly paper analysed in this article was one of the publications thatsuffered from the coup The paper was banned and some of its contributors were arrestedon the basis of suspect accusations15 An important portion of Fethullah Guumllen cadres in state institutions have been liqui-dated since the coup in 1997 The dominant sectorsrsquo relations with the community havebeen worsening since then though recently there are some signs of betterment16 This quotation is also telling in terms of the following passages of this paper theIslam of the subaltern as opposed to the Islam of the eacutelite and the struggle over themeaning of justice within the Islamist movement17 In a Turkish population of 75 million there is a heterodox Muslim population(Alevites) who number between 7 million and 25 million (estimations vary dramaticallydue to various ideological political and cultural factors) The Islamist movement is notsuccessful in organizing this population To the contrary the Alevite sectors of society ercely oppose Islamism because they believe that this movement threatens their right toexistence18 middotIdris Oumlzyol is a popular essayist with a young audience who identi es with those hecalls lsquoblack kidsrsquo ndash a metaphor he uses for people of different oppressed groups ndash andwrites his pieces from this standpoint19 It should be noted that most Islamists perceive themselves as anti-capitalist Yet thisimplies only being against monopoly capitalism a point that brings them all together aswe have noted above20 While our characterization of the centre of the Islamist movement in this manner isquite similar to the political economy characterization of Islamism in general as lsquopetitbourgeois critiquersquo we want to emphasize that the meaning system plays a crucial rolehere Being a lsquomoral capitalistrsquo is not simply the dictate of onersquos class position If this were


so the moral dimension of this socio-economic critique would never lead one to suspectthe market21 Unfortunately due to the nature of the data used in this paper we cannot know towhat degree the reader accepts the conformist solution offered by the columnist22 Even during the Asr- otilde Saadet ndash the Golden Age of Islam the times of the Prophetand the four Caliphates ndash inequalities and oppressive relations (such as slavery) persistedIslamists believe that these would gradually whither away through the moral work of thebelievers if it were not for the Umayyad counter-revolution

References


Abrahamian Ervand (1991)lsquoKhomeini fundamentalist or populistrsquoNew Left Review 186 102ndash19AgAElig aogAElig ullarotilde Mehmet Ali (1982)LrsquoIslam dans la Vie Politique de la TurquieAnkara Siyasal Bilimler FakuumlltesiAkdogAElig an Yalccedil otilde n (2000) Siyasal ImiddotslamRefah Partisirsquonin Anatomisi Imiddotstanbulordf ehir Yay otilde nlar otilde Ak otilde ncotilde UgAElig ur (1999) lsquoThe municipalradicalism of political Islam in TurkeyrsquoThe Middle East Journal 53(1) 75ndash94Arjomand Said Amir (1984)lsquoIntroduction social movements in thecontemporary Near and Middle Eastrsquo inS Arjomand (ed) From Nationalism toRevolutionary Islam Essays on SocialMovements in the Contemporary Near andMiddle East Albany NY State Universityof New York PressAsad Talal (1993) Genealogies ofReligion Discipline and Reasons of Powerin Christianity and Islam BaltimoreMD Johns Hopkins University PressAyubi Nazih (1991) Political IslamReligion and Politics in the Arab WorldLondon and New York RoutledgeBellah Robert (1970) Beyond BeliefEssays on Religion in a Post-traditionalWorld New York Harper amp RowBerger Peter (1969) The Sacred CanopyElements of a Sociological Theory ofReligion New York DoubledayBurke III Edmund (1998) lsquoOrientalismand world history representing MiddleEastern nationalism and Islamism in thetwentieth centuryrsquo Theory and Society 27489ndash507Ccedilakotilde r Ru ordm en (1990) Ayet ve SloganTuumlrkiyersquode Imiddotslami Olu ordm umlar ImiddotstanbulMetisCastoriadis Cornelius (1998) TheImaginary Institution of SocietyCambridge Polity PressDavis Eric (1987) lsquoReligion against the

state a political economy of religiousradicalism in Egypt and Israelrsquo in RAntoun and M Heghland (eds) ReligiousResurgence Contemporary Cases in IslamChristianity and Judaism New YorkSyracuseEchghi Leili (1980) lsquoLa cultureIslamique arme du peuple dans lareacutevolutionrsquo PeupleMediterraneacuteens 10Engels Friedrich (1926) Peasant War inGermany New York InternationalPublishersEsposito John (1992) Islamic ThreatMyth or Reality New York OxfordUniversity PressFischer Michael (1982) lsquoIslam and therevolt of the petite bourgeoisiersquo Daedalus111(1)mdashmdash and Abedi Mehdi (1990) DebatingMuslims Cultural Dialogues inPostmodernity and Tradition WisconsinThe University of Wisconsin PressGeertz Clifford (1973) TheInterpretation of Cultures New YorkBasic BooksGinzburg Carlo (1980) The Cheese andthe Worms the Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller Baltimore Johns HopkinsUniversity PressGellner Ernest (1981) Muslim SocietyNew York Cambridge University PressGuumllalp Haldun (1999) lsquoPolitical Islamin Turkey the rise and fall of the RefahPartyrsquo The Muslim World 89(1) 22ndash41Hann Chris (1997) lsquoThe nation-statereligion and uncivil society twoperspectives from the peripheryrsquoDaedalus 126 27ndash45Haynes Jeff (1993) Religion in ThirdWorld Politics Boulder CO LynneRiennerHegland Mary Elaine (1987) lsquoReligiousresurgence in todayrsquos world refuge fromdislocation or enablement for changersquo in

R Antoun and M Hegland (eds)Religious Resurgence Contemporary Casesin Islam Christianity and Judaism NewYork SyracuseHenry Paget (1986) lsquoIndigenousreligions and the transformation ofperipheral societiesrsquo in J Hadden andA Schupe (eds) Prophetic Religions andPolitics New York Paragon pp 123ndash50Heper Metin (1997) lsquoIslam anddemocracy in Turkey toward areconciliationrsquo The Middle East Journal51 32ndash45Horkheimer Max (1972) CriticalTheory New York Herder amp HerderHuntington Samuel (1996) The Clashof Civilizations and the Remaking of WorldOrder New York Simon amp SchustermiddotInalc otilde k Halil (1989) Ottoman EmpireThe Classical Age 1300ndash1600 NewRochelle NY A D CaratzasOrpheusKautsky Karl (1953) Foundations ofChristianity New York S A RussellKeddie Nikki (1991) lsquoThe revolt ofIslam and its rootsrsquo in Dankwart ARustow and Kenneth Paul Erickson (eds)Comparative Political Dynamics GlobalResearch Perspectives New YorkHarperCollinsKepel Gilles (1994) The Revenge ofGod The Resurgence of Islam Christianityand Judaism in the Modern WorldUniversity Park PA Pennsylvania StateUniversity PressLanternari Vittorio (1963) TheReligions of the Oppressed New YorkKnopfLeonard Stephen (1998) lsquoLiberationtheology as critical theoryrsquo in CriticalTheory in Political Practice Princeton NJPrinceton University PressMcKown Delos B (1975) The ClassicalMarxist Critiques of Religion The HagueMartinus NijhoffMcLellan David (1987) Marxism andReligion London MacmillanMardin ordf erif (1991) lsquoThe just and theunjustrsquo Daedalus 120 113ndash29Marty Martin and Appleby Scott(1991) lsquoAn interim report on a hypotheticalfamilyrsquo in Martin Marty and ScottAppleby (eds) Fundamentalisms ObservedChicago University of Chicago PressMarx Karl (1974) On Religion NewYork McGraw-HillPortelli Hugues (1974) Gramsci et la

Question Religieuse Paris EditionsAnthroposRiesebrodt Martin (1993) PiousPassions The Emergence of ModernFundamentalism in the United States andIran Berkeley CA University ofCalifornia PressRobertson Roland (1986) lsquoLiberationtheology in Latin America sociologicalproblems of interpretation andexplanationrsquo in J Hadden and A Shupe(eds) Prophetic Religions and Politics NewYork ParagonRodinson Maxime (1972) Marxisme etMonde Musulman Paris Editions deSeuilSakallotilde ogAElig lu Uumlmit Cizre (1996)lsquoParameters and strategies of Islamndashstateinteraction in Republican TurkeyrsquoInternational Journal of Middle EastStudies 28(2) 231ndash51ordf en Serdar (1995) Refah Partisinin Teorive PratigAEligi (The Theory and Practice of theWelfare Party) Istanbul SarmalYay otilde nc otilde lotilde kSmart Ninian (1991) lsquoOld religionsnew religions the lessons of the colonialerarsquo in W C Roof (ed) World Order andReligion New York SUNY Press pp67ndash81Sommersville John (1998) lsquoSecularsocietyreligious population our tacitrules for using the termldquoSecularizationrdquo rsquo Journal for theScienti c Study of Religion 37(2)Stark Rodney (1999) lsquoSecularizationRIPrsquo Sociology of Religion 60(3)249ndash73Thompson E P (1963) The Making ofthe English Working Class LondonGollanczToprak Binnaz (1981) Islam andPolitical Development in Turkey LeidenE J BrillWeber Max (1963) Sociology of ReligionBoston MA Beacon PressWuthnow Robert (1987) Meaning andMoral Order Explorations in CulturalAnalysis Berkeley CA University ofCalifornia Pressmdashmdash (1991) lsquoUnderstanding religion andpoliticsrsquo Daedalus 120(3) 1ndash20Zubaida Sami (1989) Islam the Peopleand the State Political Ideas andMovements in the Middle East New YorkRoutledge


Henry 1986) Here I contend that we need to combine both material and cul-tural understandings of religion in order to reach an adequate interpretation ofthis phenomenon I shall focus on Islamist movements in general and the move-ment in contemporary Turkey in particular to illustrate my main points I arguethat Islamism which is currently interpreted as pre-rational lsquopetty bourgeoispopulismrsquo or traditionalism needs to be understood instead as a multivalentreligio-moral populism ndash a potentially explosive articulation of different classinterests and religious cravings I shall demonstrate my argument through aclose reading of prominent Islamist newspapers and journals for a ve-monthperiod

One must remember however that the militant and long-standing state policyof secularization and modernism distinguishes Turkey from other Islamic coun-tries Secularizing techniques have affected almost every community and indi-vidual in the country This condition problematizes approaches that tend to seereligious movements as the return to concerns and structures which ThirdWorld states have attempted to repress (Haynes 1993) Whereas Islamism isclearly responding to these secularizing policies Turkeyrsquos peculiar conditionaffirms that religious movements cannot be explained through recourse to atheory of deeply entrenched forms waiting to be lsquorevivedrsquo1 Also the long tra-dition of (non-Islamic) socialism and Marxism in this country (another differ-entiating factor from other Islamic countries) makes it unlikely that thepopulation would lsquoregressrsquo to so-called lsquoirrationalrsquo forms of protest despite theavailability of lsquorationalrsquo ones2 In other words the strong mass appeal ofreformist and revolutionary leftist movements in Turkey of the 1970s casts adoubt on certain materialist interpretations which argue that religious move-ments are substitutes for mass mobilization when there is a lack of full-blownrational alternatives These peculiarities of Turkey require a novel typology forIslamism more developed than models focusing on traditionalism and pre-rational populism

Sociological traditions and contemporary Islam

Even though there is a wide spectrum of paradigms concerning contemporaryreligious movements the theoretical scene tends to be polarized into thosereducing the rise of religious politics to material variables (lsquomaterialistrsquoapproaches) and those emphasizing cultural factors to the detriment of materialones (lsquoideationalrsquo approaches) They may differ on a wide range of topics butMarxist neo-Marxist and historical-institutional paradigms share a commonground in that they take religious meaning systems as instruments of socialactors Hence the label materialist Essentialist and meaning-oriented paradigmsare irreconcilable on a set of issues including their respective narratives regard-ing continuity and change in cultural systems However they both take themeaning system to be the sole explanatory factor when analysing religious poli-tics and hence the label ideational In the following sections I shall take up each
































The Islamist print













































Moral capitalism






















(Akit 6 May 1999)































Conclusion



Postscript




Notes







References





































The Islamist print













































Moral capitalism






















(Akit 6 May 1999)































Conclusion



Postscript




Notes







References















































Moral capitalism






















(Akit 6 May 1999)































Conclusion



Postscript




Notes







References























(Akit 6 May 1999)































Conclusion



Postscript




Notes







References


































Conclusion



Postscript




Notes







References








Notes







References










References







Islamism in Turkey: beyond instrument and...

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Transcript of Islamism in Turkey: beyond instrument and...