How Happy to Call Oneself a Turk: Provincial Newspapers and the Negotiation of a Muslim National Identity

Chapter 7: Religious Reactionaries or Muslim Turks? Print Culture and the Negotiation of National Identity

CHapter 7 religious reaCtionaries or MusliM turks? print Culture and the negotiation of national identity The Turkish nation is Muslim, and it will remain Muslim. In this country no one has the authority to attack freedom of conscience. Genuine believers [mümin] and sincere Muslims can be absolutely sure of the freedom of conscience. However, true believers and Muslims . . . know how to respect the religious conscience and beliefs of others. priMe Minister adnan Menderes, adana, deCeMber 6, 1952 The accusation is made that because The Guide for Youth provides religious instruction, it is contrary to laiklik: in that case, what is the meaning of laiklik? We wonder: is laiklik the enemy of Islam? Does laiklik denote irreligion? Does laiklik give the freedom to attack religion to those who have chosen to pursue life without religion? Is laiklik the rule of absolute despotism that permits the suppression of those who proclaim the truths of religion and publish the lessons of faith? bediÜZZaMan said nursi, emIrdaĞ LahIkası II (1952) tHe prevailinG narrative of Turkish history credits Mustafa Kemal Atatürk with the creation of the modern secular nation between the world wars. It also defines Turkish history according to political developments in such a way that the year 1950 stands out as a point of rupture: the Republican People’s Party lost general elections and was replaced in government by the Democratic Party. In contrast, in this book I argue for a sociohistorical approach to the transition from Ottoman Empire to Turkish nation that presents the entire decade starting in 1945 as pivotal, for it was in these years that a popular national identity crystallized in Turkey. More to the point, this was a distinctly religious or Muslim national identity rather than the “secular” loyalty so commonly associated with the Turkish Revolution. To appreciate this 204 how happy to Call oneself a turk development it is necessary to move away from elite, centrist history with its focus upon great men and powerful ideologies to the question of how people in fact participated in and experienced the formation of the nation. Previous chapters have demonstrated the importance of the national print culture emerging after 1945 in the definition of the very idea of the “nation” among the people. Specifically, the provincial newspapers with which people were increasingly likely to come into contact situated Turkey with reference to both the post–World War II international order and the Ottoman past. In each case these print media contributed to the negotiation of a national identity by validating popular religious identities rather than denigrating them, as had been the case with earlier Kemalist ideology and practice. This chapter examines the context within which this negotiation occurred: an often bitter public debate about the place of Islam in Turkey and the efficacy of laiklik. This debate, featured prominently in the pages of both metropolitan and provincial print media, was the public dimension to the political debate already described in Chapter 4. In light of the absence of such debate during the single-party period and the Kemalist determination to prevent public discussion of laiklik, this development after 1945 was remarkable. It was possible, however, only because of the emergence of religious print media in this decade. This debate was joined by people across the country, because these religious publications circulated regularly in the provinces as well as in Istanbul, Izmir, and Ankara. Its significance and influence is evident: not only the influential mystic Bediüzzaman Said Nursi but also prime minister Adnan Menderes publicly argued that religion constituted an integral dimension of the Turkish nation. In the first decade of multiparty politics, therefore, it actually began to be possible for people to make an active contribution to the shaping of their nation. If we look beyond nationalist ideology, it is clear that people used newly flourishing print media to negotiate the meaning accorded to the nation—that is, to exercise their constitutional rights and freedoms to contribute to a mass public culture. In contrast to earlier Kemalist efforts to impose on the people a homogenous definition of the nation informed by a narrow, exclusive understanding of laiklik, after 1945 a new and more generous approach to government facilitated the transformation to a “civil” understanding of the nation. It elevated the people to equal participants in the theatre of that nation. Rather than force Turks to sacrifice alternative identities for the sake of the religious...