The new antinomies of the Islamic movement in post-Gezi Turkey: Islamism vs. Muslimism

ABSTRACT

The third-term policies of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) in Turkey posed new challenges for observers: do top-down Islamization policies and the increasing pan-Islamist tone in Turkish foreign policy signify a return to Islamism or is a new amalgamation in the making? In this case, is ‘post-Islamism’ now dated as an analytical tool to characterize the AKP’s new ideological formation or was it always a misnomer? Drawing on el-Affendi’s (2008) distinction between the Medina and Damascus models and observing the new Islamic opposition to the AKP policies, its post-2011 ideological configuration will be analyzed with reference to an antinomy of Islamism vs. Muslimism. Muslimism, an extension of Damascus model, is a quest for power and seeks Muslim interests worldwide. Islamism, an heir to Medina model, may be characterized by an ethical pursuit of justice that occasionally clashes with Muslim political interests.

KEYWORDS:

• Islamism
• Muslimism
• post-Islamism
• AKP
• Medina model
• Damascus model
• Gezi

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Halil Ibrahim Yenigün is a Fellow of Europe in the Middle East – the Middle East in Europe (EUME) at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia’s political theory program. His primary research is on comparative political theory with a specific focus on contemporary Muslim political thought and Islamism. He is also an Academic for Peace, who was dismissed from his assistant professor position at Istanbul Commerce University on 22 February 2016 due to his signature on the Petition for Peace.

ORCID

Halil Ibrahim Yenigun http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7940-6892

Notes

1. “Babuşcu: Gelecek 10 Yıl,” 1.

2. White, Muslim Nationalism; Tuğal, “Retrenchment of Conservatism”; Cevik, “Theological Roots of Liberalism.”

3. Hamid, Temptations of Power, 221; Lagendijk, “AKP.”

4. El-Affendi’s book was published in Turkish in 1994. However, it enjoyed an unexpected popularity when, shortly thereafter, Yeni Şafak asked Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Istanbul’s mayor then, what he was reading these days. He replied he was reading Who Needs an Islamic State?, adding that it was a unique work that offered an alternative model of the state. Thereafter thinkers such as el-Affendi and Soroush would frequent Istanbul through the Istanbul Municipality’s international conferences and cultural events to create new lively debates on Islam and politics.

5. “Siyasi İslam Yol Ayrımında,” 6, 8.

6. Bayat, “The Coming.”

7. Emre, “‘İslamcılık Yaptık’.”

8. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror, 26; Gülalp, “Modernization Policies,” 52.

9. Wiktorowicz, “Islamic Activism,” 192.

10. Ibid., 192.

11. Ibid., 189.

12. Ibid., 26–7.

13. Wickham, Mobilizing Islam, 147.

14. See, Tunaya, İslâmcılık Cereyanı, viii. See also, Berkes, The Development of Secularism.

15. Mardin, “Center-Periphery Relations,” 31.

16. See, Gülalp, “The Crisis of Westernization”; Gülalp, “Using Islam.”

17. Gülalp, “Using Islam,” 23.

18. Göle, “The Quest for the Islamic Self,” 82–3.

19. Ibid., 88.

20. Yavuz, “Islamic Political Identity,” 572.

21. Ibid., 551

22. A wider public debate on the U.S. support behind the AKP was sparked in late 2014 by allegations about a meeting held between the Islamists and the U.S. officials in the late 1990s on a possible U.S. support for Islamists’ coming to power in Turkey. Both pro-government Islamist columnist Abdurrahman Dilipak and anti-government Islamist intellectual Ali Bulaç confirmed the allegations. See, Bulaç, “Ak Parti.”

23. “Savaşa ve İşgale Hayır,” 1.

24. “Beyazıt Irak Eylemi,” 1.

25. For an overview of the Islamist oppositional activism and its alliance with socialists during the 2002–03 anti-war movement against the U.S. occupation of Iraq, see Önen, “Savaşa Hayır.”

26. Akdoğan, Ak Parti, 110.

27. Insel, “AKP and Normalizing,” 300–1.

28. Ibid., 301, 305.

29. Uluslararası Muhafazakarlık ve Demokrasi Sempozyumu. In the preface, it declares that “The Justice and Development Party has determined its political philosophy as ‘conservative democracy.’”

30. Even the leading LDT scholar, Atilla Yayla, was cautious about the formulation of conservative democracy, although he expressed that their organization was quite influential on the adoption of this label. Akif Emre, as an Islamist writer, contended that this would amount to surrender to the global capital’s models and notions. Emre, “Muhafazakarlık,” 10.

31. Bayramoğlu, “AK Parti Kendisine Haksızlık Ediyor,” 10.

32. Akdoğan, Ak Parti.

33. Ibid., 106 (emphases added). Accordingly, he contends that the AK Party members who identify themselves as Islamists are only 10–15 percent.

34. According to my personal communication with Bekir Berat Özipek, who took part in the conference organization and whose work on conservatism clearly influenced Akdoğan’s books, another reason might be the negative reactions they received during the conference and its aftermath to the concept of ‘conservative democracy’ from the liberal political scientists, who would nonetheless support the abandonment of Islamism (Communication date: 13 October 2015). Political scientists Atilla Yayla and Ali Bayramoğlu also objected to this term as it is not a widely accepted one in democratic theory literature. Bayramoğlu, “Hem Muhafazakar Hem Demokrat,” 17.

35. For some exemplary works, see, Hosgör, “Islamic Capital”; “Islamic Calvinists”; Adas, “Entrepreneurial Islam.”

36. Bokhari and Senzai, Political Islam, 175.

37. Ibid., 111. Post-Sufis ‘tend to be more nationalistic and more formally organized when compared to the Sufi groups.’ They were neither Islamist nor post-Islamist in Tuğal’s view, though their turn to Western values predates post-Islamism. Ibid., 112.

38. Bokhari and Senzai, Political Islam, 175.

39. Tuğal, “Retrenchment of Conservatism,” 128. Tuğal saw the relationship more than a simple alliance and more like a merger, as many Gülen followers were then AKP members and leaders.

40. While Tuğal sees post-Sufis and AKP as a regression to Turkish conservatism, for Bokhari and Senzai the AKP best exemplifies post-Islamism. Bokhari and Senzai, Political Islam, 182.

41. Insel, “AKP and Normalizing,” 303.

42. Ibid., 305.

43. Tuğal, “Retrenchment of Conservatism,” 124. For Tuğal, with respect to their notions of national pride, mainstream and pragmatic foreign policy, stance against authoritarian secularism, and the individualist and market-oriented understanding of responsibility Gülen community, too, was far from post-Islamism and rather Islamic conservative and nationalist. Ibid., 127.

44. Rohde, “Trust Tunisia.”

45. El-Affendi, Islamic State, 183.

46. Ibid., 66.

47. Ibid., 170.

48. Ibid., 185.

49. El-Affendi, “The Elusive Reformation.”

50. For some representative works that draw on a distinction between Islamism and Muslimism, see, Cevik, “Theological Roots of Liberalism,” 89, Emre, “Müslümancılık.” My formulation is more along the lines of Emre as opposed to Cevik, who says,

Within the frame of Muslimism, the main aim is not capturing the state to Islamize the society nor is it Islamizing the community to eventually bring on an Islamic state. The main concern is to contrive a lifestyle in which the ‘individual-believer’ can be incorporated into modernity without being marginalized and while preserving an Islam-proper living.

Cevik and Thomas, “Muslimism in Turkey,” 147. For a much earlier debate that presaged this antinomy, see, Bilici, “İslamcılığa Dair.”

51. Bayat, Making Islam Democratic, 6.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid., 7.

54. This is not to say that the so-called ‘Islamist’ parties fall into the Islamism part of this antinomy. As seekers of power by definition, political parties have a decidedly Muslimist potential. In this sense, Welfare Party does not embody the Islamist category as much as the Islamist oppositional youth that I cover below.

55. El-Affendi, Islamic State, 171.

56. As ardent opponents of Abdulhamid’s despotism and followers of Afghani, Mehmet Akif and Second Constitutional Era Islamists believed that religious reform based on a more rational understanding of Islam as well as good government based on constitutionalism, shūrā, and rights and liberties would save the Muslims from decline and put them back on the path of civilization.

57. Although Maududi also proposed his Islamism as a quest for Muslim leadership of the world (quest for power), he still presents it in essence as a moral project. Hence, he cares to distinguish between Pakistani Muslim elite’s Muslim nationalism and his own vision of Islamic politics:

… [T]hey had no knowledge of Islam  … and no conception of a state formed on a definite set of moral and spiritual principles instead of the principle of race or nationality. They talk of an Islamic state but, … they have … no plan of life except that derived from the life and history of a national state in Europe … . According to them, the nature of the problem that confronts us is no more than this: that Muslims are a separate national group like Hindus, Englishmen [with] every right to a separate national existence under a state and government of their own … ; These people also use Islamic terms, ‘Ummah’ ‘Millat,’ ‘Ameer’  … . To them, however, these Islamic terms are synonymous with the terminology of nationalism … If you understand the nature of a state based on spiritual and moral principles, you will find little difficulty in realizing that this attitude of thought and action and this program of work cannot serve even as a starting point for arriving at the desired goal of an ideological state … . Maududi, Islamic Revolution, 4–5

58. “Massacre at Uludere.”

59. “Erdoğan Says Gov’t Steps.”

60. Görçüm, “Uludere Mağdurları.”

61. Zaman, “AKP Report.”

62. “Uludere Iftarında Gerginlik.”

63. For the May Day reports on police brutality, see, “İBB Önünde Müdahale.”

64. “Başörtüsüne Saldırıyı Siyasi Malzemeye.”

65. Üzer, “Gezide Kaybolanlar,” 6.

66. “Oligarşiye Destek Çıkan İslamcılar.”

67. “Labor and Justice Coalition.”

68. Gülşen, “Steril Solculuk,” 17.

69. Özdenören, “Yanlış Bilinç,” 12; “Yanlış Bilinç (2),” 7. For an earlier version of my analysis on Gülşen and Özdenören's reactions to Gezi Declaration, see, Yenigun, “Turkish Islamism,” 146–147.

70. The Marxist jargon in their objection to the Islamists’ ‘ideological’ outlook and ‘false consciousness’ is worth noting.

71. This mode of reasoning has been observable with many pro-government Islamist writers. For instance, when Erdoğan’s insinuations of the police intervention in co-ed housing was responded by religious objections on the ground of right to privacy as enjoined by the Qur’an, Hayreddin Karaman, the jurist known as the apologist for AKP’s controversial policies stepped in to say, ‘In a political regime that aims to push Islam out of the political and social life (i.e. a secular democratic republic), it is a misleading and confusing incoherence to use Islamic criteria to determine right and wrong, legitimate and illegitimate, ethical and unethical.’ Karaman, “Hangi Eve Girilemez?,” 5.

72. Esen and Gumuscu, “Rising Competitive Authoritarianism.”

73. Tuğal, “Retrenchment of Conservatism,” 128–9.

74. Bayat, “The Coming,” 45.

75. Bayat, Islam and Democracy, 19.

76. Jenny White’s concept of Muslim nationalism seems to be another alternative to post-Islamism. Muslim nationalism, although different from my conception of Muslimism/Muslim nationalism, resembles other forms of nationalism but it is opposed to the secularist nationalism of Kemalism. In this framework, everything from lifestyle to public and foreign policy are for reinterpretation not based on Islam, but a distinctively postimperial sensibility, a cultural Turkism. White, Muslim Nationalism, 19, 39.

77. This is not to suggest that Muslimism is a phase or project à la Bayat’s post-Islamism or there can be any definite period under the AKP rule which can be called ‘Muslimist project’ or ‘Muslimist model.’ Yet it could be argued that there are Muslimist politicians or supporters of the AKP.