In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

I X P R E F A C E A N D A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S My interest in the subject of this book has its roots in my high school years in the mid-1990s, when the Welfare Party emerged as the most popular and dynamic force in Turkish politics. I became curious about this force, which remained very enigmatic for me. My college years in Istanbul introduced me to a relatively cosmopolitan atmosphere where I met people for whom the Welfare Party had something to offer. Those interactions deepened my curiosity. Meanwhile, the Welfare Party rose and went down; the Islamist movement lost its orientation with the 1997 military intervention; ex–Welfare Party cadres regrouped under a new party that suddenly became an enthusiastic supporter of the European Union (EU). Turkey experienced its worst economic crisis since World War II shortly after I went to graduate school in the United States. That crisis generated a golden opportunity for a relatively younger generation of politicians who abandoned their old mentor, Necmettin Erbakan, the leader of the Welfare Party. They claimed to rebuild the center in Turkish politics. When I was visiting the offices of their party in the summer of 2002, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his companions were full of enthusiasm and promises. They turned out to be very successful and became the predominant political force in the country after the November 2002 elections. Studying electoral processes when politicians compete to appeal to hearts and minds was very productive learning that helped me develop a better sense of how and why people act politically. Nonetheless, I realized that an exclusive focus on Turkey would leave my understanding too parochial and captive to domestic polemics. In late 2002, I decided to expand my research into Iran, where a Muslim reformist movement had recently achieved unprecedented popularity under the leadership of Mohammad Khatami. The center-periphery relations at a global level greatly shaped this decision. It was more feasible for a Turkish citizen based in the United States to conduct research in Iran than either a Turkish citizen based in Turkey or a U.S. citizen based in the United States. For many Turkish citizens, the Islamic Republic of Iran remains P R E FAC E A N D AC K N O W L E D G M E N T S X “Turkey’s Orient,” the “essential other” against which the Turkish republic defines its spirit and achievements. Perplexingly for them, my travels to Iran have greatly informed my understanding of my own country’s cultural and historical heritage and politics that have much in common with its eastern neighbor. I still consider myself a novice as a student of Iranian politics after many travels, interactions, and readings. At the same time, I feel confident that I gained some unique insights into the dynamics of Iranian politics that enable me to offer an interesting narrative of the contemporary evolution of Iranian Muslim reformers. My research in these two countries mostly satisfied my original curiosity of learning how Muslim political actors believe, strategize, and act. The more I study Iranian and Turkish Muslim reformers, the more I become critical of the term “moderation” that has been central to scholarly and public debates about the progress of democracy in the Muslim Middle East. Muslim political actors are encouraged to be more moderate; moderation has been perceived as conducive to democratic openings. I tend to disagree. Muslim reformers in Iran and Turkey have not been lacking in moderation; on the contrary, they are often shown as the most prominent examples of “Muslim democrats.” Yet they have not necessarily been agents of democratic change. In fact, moderation that entails compromise, commitment to electoral rules, and reconciliation may actually hinder the expansion of political rights, the establishment of a culture of human rights, and the making of political power accountable and transparent. Writing a comparative narrative based on an analytical framework with the purpose of addressing multiple audiences always entails difficult tradeoffs between theoretical parsimony and consistency on the one hand, and empirical accuracy and richness on the other. I strive to strike a balance between these two worthy goals. It remains the reader’s right to judge. I did not always feel comfortable writing this book, as scholarship does not free one from passing judgment on the objects of the study. Being aware of this inevitability, I have very self-consciously...

Share