Religion, Politics and Civil Society in Turkey: Transforming the public space

For the better part of the twentieth century, Turkey was a country enforcing the strictest separation of religion and state in the Muslim world. From the 1920s until the mid-1980s, the state ideology of Kemalism -- named after the first president of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal (a.k.a. Ataturk) -- ensured that any expressions of religiosity were not only out of bounds in politics, but actually kept out of the public sphere altogether. In particular the military positioned itself as the guardian of the constitutional limitations on any form of political Islam. However, in two decades or so, Turkey has developed into one of the most interesting 'places to watch' in regards to new ways in which Islam is allowed to feature in the public sphere. Now religion even has found a new place in Turkish political life.

Turgut Ozal

Ironically, it was in the wake of the 1980 coup d'etat that the military itself allowed the creation of what Hakan Yavuz calls a 'new opportunity space' by acknowledging the link between national and religious identity in the form of a 'Turkish-Islamic Synthesis' (TIS). This major shift in political thinking was actively advocated by Turgut Özal (1927-1993), who served as prime minister from 1983 until 1989 when he took over the presidency from General Kenan Evren, leader of the 1980 putsch and the most senior military official to condone the TIS. Although Özal was often hailed as the most influential political figure after Ataturk, it was only three years after his sudden death in 1993 that the so-called Refah or Welfare Party, an overtly Islamic political party, was able to take real political control, even though this was short-lived. Quickly banned following a 'velvet coup' by the armed forces in 1997, it resurfaced first as the Virtue Party (1998) and then, in 2001, as the Felicity Party. But it was not until a younger generation of politicians redrew the map of Turkish politics by establishing the Justice and Development Party ( AKP, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi ) that an Islam-inspired party managed to make more enduring inroads into the country's political landscape.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Since 2002, Turkey has been governed by the AKP party, first under Prime Minister Abdullah Gül and then under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b. 1954), a former mayor of Istanbul and the real leader of the AKP (Gül first moved to the ministry of foreign affairs, before winning the presidential elections). In contrast to the Welfare, Virtue and Felicity Parties, the AKP does not promote an overtly Islamic agenda. Its ideological orientation has more parallels with Christian-Democratic parties in Western Europe than with its Islamist predecessors. Although Islam definitely provides AKP politicians with a moral compass, this is translated in decidedly pragmatic political programmes. Their prime focus is on economic policy, democratic reforms, active engagement in international diplomacy, mediation and conflict resolution. All these initiatives are geared towards securing EU-membership.

Aside from these drastic changes in political developments, perhaps an even more interesting development during the same time frame is the emergence of what can be called a Turkish 'civil Islam'. This is most prominently exemplified by the initatives deployed by the so-called Gülen Movement, led by Fethullah Gülen (b. 1941). This former mosque Imam gives direction to a somewhat amorphous and multifarious organisation involved in reshaping Turkish civil society through wide-ranging activities in the fields of education, media, charity and philantropy. His influence has been so pervasive that in a 2008 survey by Prospect Magazine, Gülen surfaced as the most influential global public intellectual. The movement does namely not limit its activities to only Turkey, but is also involved on the international scene, especially in Central Asia, Southeastern Europe, and Western countries with Turkish communities or substantial numbers of citizens of Turkish descent.

Fethullah Gulen with Pope John Paul II

One such international exponent is the UK-based Dialogue Society. Established in 1999, it recently celebrated its ten-year anniversary. During the first decade of its existence it has been highly successful in networking with the political establishment, supporting the foundation of a number of private schools, deploying initiatives towards community cohesion, and organising academic seminars, workshops, and round-table discussions in which politicians, civil servants, academics, social activists and journalists are brought togehter to discuss issues affecting pluralist societies such as those emerging in the UK, in particular in the London area.

The Dialogue Society also facilitates trips enabling participants in its various activities to gain first-hand experience of current developments in Turkey. During a recent visit to Istanbul, I was thus in a position to become acquainted with some of the projects initiated, supported or inspired by the Gülen Movement. Meetings and discussions were held with, for example, representatives of the charity organisation Kimse Yok Mu ('Is Anybody Out There?'), which had started out as a TV programme to raise funds for earthquake victims and quickly developed into a prominent disaster and poverty relief agency.

Media form a very important part in the network of Gülen Movement-associated organisations. These include the Samanyolu TV Station and Zaman Media group. Samanyolu operates a network of satellite stations in Kurdistan, Istanbul and the United States, where it broadcasts as Ebru TV.

The Zaman group publishes an English-language edition known as Today's Zaman. Numerous leading political commentators and academics, including Şahin Alpay,Kerim Balci and Ihsan Yilmaz write columns for this periodical.

 On the intellectual front, the Journalists and Writers Foundation connects a plethora of forums and platforms engaged in such activities as interfaith dialogue, gender issues, and the facilitation of relations between Turkey, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. One of its most prominent initiatives is the Abant Platform, envisaged as an alternative to the annual Davos World Economic Forum.

Perhaps the most visible aspect of the Gülen Movement is its worldwide network of private schools, ranging from nurseries and primary education to academically rigorous and highly successful high schools and colleges, and even universities, such as Fatih University on the outskirts of Istanbul. The entire system is privately funded, not only relying on fees, but also on large-scale donations from an increasingly affluent and assertive middle class, with roots in the socially conservative provincial cities and towns of Anatolia and the Black Sea area.

Alparslan Acikgenc

Reflective of this connection with a professional middle class is the fact that these primary and secondary schools are very much geared towards the three 'R's (reading, writing, arithmetic). On the tertiary level too, the curricula focus on the natural sciences, engineering, medicine and law. Fatih University, though, offers also courses in history and languages. Religion is markedly absent from all programmes. The explanation given for this is that it is assumed that religious and moral values are instilled in the home environment. Interestingly, though, very recently Fatih University was actually requested by the education ministry to start developing a programme in divinity. Responsibility for this new venture rests with the vice-rector, Alparslan Acikgenc. A philosopher trained at the University of Chicago under the direction of Fazlur Rahman, he taught at Middle Eastern Technical University (METU) in Ankara, where he supervised in ther late 1980s the PhD research of M. Amin Abdullah, rector of UIN Sunan Kalijaga in Yogyakarta. Before being appointed to Fatih University in 1999, he spent eight years teaching in Malaysia.

Ihsan Yilmaz

(Photo above) Dr Ihsan Yilmaz during a frank discussion on the careful navigations required for operating a private university associated with the Gülen Movement in Turkey. (Photo below): Final reflection and discussions with political commentator Kerim Balci.

Kerim Balci (R) and Carool Kersten (L)

Recommended readings on recent developments in Turkey and on the Gülen Movement:

'The Rushdie Affair' twenty years on: Lessons learned?

Last week I had the pleasure and privilege of moderating a panel discussion on occasion of the launch of Professor Paul Weller's new book A Mirror for Our Times: The Rushdie Affair and the Future of Multiculturalism hosted by the Dialogue Society in North London, which deserves to be congratulated for its courage to organize a potentially controversial event.


The timing of the book's release was very appropriate since it was almost to the week twenty years ago that the 'The Rushdie Affair' burst into the limelight, when the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his now notorious fatwa in response to Salman Rushdie's then latest book The Satanic Verses,which Muslims worldwide thought extremely offensive.

The book is largely based on the author's Postgraduate Research completed in 1996, in which he looked in great detail at 'The Rushdie Affair'. With the advantage of another ten years of 'critical distance', Weller's focuses on the lessons to be learned from issues such as The Satanic Verses affair, as well as the Danish Cartoon controversy or the assassination of Theo van Gogh. In an eloquent presentation Weller first laid out a number of 'learning points' to be derived from such events and the reactions to it.

First and foremost that dead threats are not acceptable and that the fear resulting from it is 'insidious'. On the other hand, Muslim concerns over issues affecting their convictions, including robust opposition to it, is acceptable. The ability of Muslims to be able to express their views is a sine qua non for pluralism. Although no state is entirely free from constraints put on the freedom of expression, these lines are extremely difficult to draw and never final. Many of the counter reactions to the Muslim concerns coming from the 'secular' camp evince a deepseated ignorance of Islam and act as a stimulus for Islamophobia. Weller added the caveat that as a relatively new phenomenon arising out of European wars of religion it is secularity rather than religiosity which needs explaining. These European roots make the whole notion of secularity even more problematic because of the colonial and imperialist connotations attached to it. This is also one of the reasons why it is absolutely essential to retain a global perspective of the impact of controversies such as 'The Rushdie Affair'. One of the most important tasks for Muslims and others is to reflect on this engagement with secularity, because both religiosity and secularism can be set on their heads.

Weller continued to argue that from these ten learning points, we can extract six 'points of challenge':

1. Governments must learn from history that to combat terror with methods that undermine human rights will only strengthen those forces that use terror as a means of advancing their cause.
2. To ignore or deny the reasons that those who use terror to advance their cause give for their actions is unlikely to lead to a resolution of the problems caused by terror.
3. Terror in the name of religion is particularly dangerous both to the wider body politic and to religions themselves, because it harnesses ultimate convictions and commitments in its destructive service.
4. Attempts by the ‘powers that be’, artificially and externally to create a ‘liberal’ or ‘moderate’ Islam (or indeed any other religion), are likely to prove ineffective and may also backfire.
5. Muslims (and indeed people of other religions) have to accept a greater responsibility for combating the dissemination and propagation of ‘enemy images’ among the faithful.
6. For multiculturalism to continue to have a future, governments and societies must acknowledge and tackle Islamophobia, and indeed all other forms of discrimination and hatred on the grounds of religion or belief.

Weller's exposition on the book's intentions and objectives formed the starting point for a discussion involving the two respondents on the panel: Dr. Abdelwahab El-Affendi, a Reader in Politics from the University of Westminister's Department of Politics and International Affairs and coordinator of its Programme on Democracy and Islam, and Dr. Sara Silvestri, an academic working on Islam in Europe at the School of Social Sciences at City University London.


Both discussants who had not only listened to Professor Weller's presentation but also had had an opportunity to review the book were by and large in agreement with the author. Dr. El-Affendy expressed some reservations regarding the issue of secularism, adding that religiously-motivated terror is too easy a qualification. Instead he prefers to speak of 'identity-motivated' terror which is never 100% religious. He very much agreed with Professor Weller's insistence on the importance of nuance, in particular in regards to the fact that 'words matter' -- one of the reasons why Weller insists on speaking of 'terror' not 'terrorism'. On the same grounds Weller refuses to dismiss 'colonialism' and 'imperialism' as mere slogans, and underscores the importance of distinguishing between 'secularity' and 'secularism'. He also agreed with El-Affendy that it is important to explore the religion-identity dialectic in detail.

Sara Silversti began by qualifying Weller's latest publication as an expert and proper scholarly account, but that should not deter the general reader because A Mirror for Our Times is at the same time a very readable book. In her further response also Dr. Silvestri recognized 'secularism' and 'religion' as the buzzwords hovering over 'The Rushdie Affair' as the case at hand. In addition she made it a point to explicitly reject the use of the word Islamophobia, because it has resulted in creating a space in which Muslims only reinforce the negative image. Another valid observation was that the attention paid to controversies involving Islam or Muslims has a detrimental effect on other minorities who face challenges in Westerns societies, and who are frequently getting upset about the 'special' attention which Muslim issues seem to receive. Moreover, she also thought it important to note that, like words, also specificity 'matters': those committing acts of terror tend to 'hijack' issues for political purposes which are actual 'societal' issues that need urgent attention.

Two other points arising from the further exchange of views were that in spite of the book's focus on the British situation, and by extension part of the European situation as well, it is imperative not too lose sight of the fact that almost all of the complex issues involving Muslim communities in Britain or Europe have a global aspect as well. Dr. El-Affendy was adamant that the foreign policy dimension can neither be denied nor ignored. Finally it was hearthening for your humble servant and panel chair to note that all panelists agreed that one of the main challenges in discussions centering on issues involving the contemporary Muslim world is to avoid pigeonholing: such as the tendency to search for 'moderate' or 'liberal' Islam as a counterweight for the equally illusive 'Islamic radicalism'.

Suggestions for further reading: