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C H A P T E R 1 Introduction In the summer of 2002, the headquarters of the Justice and Development Party (JDP; Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) was hardly a well-known address . Visitors to the newly constructed building located in the Balgat district of Ankara were few in number and had easy access to leadership cadres. The relationships were personal within the party; all divisions worked closely with one another. The party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and founded by a group of politicians who split from the Islamist1 movement, had around fifty parliamentarians and was in the opposition. The party leadership had an ambitious political vision. The JDP would have a democratic governance structure, establish rigorous ethical standards for its members, actively fight against corruption, realize social justice by redressing income inequalities, and become a leading actor of Turkish democratization, which gained new impetus with the increasing prospects of Turkey’s membership in the European Union (EU). The public was receptive to the JDP in the aftermath of Turkey’s worst post–World War II economic crisis. The tripartite coalition government, which had ruled the country since the April 1999 elections, started to unravel and called for early elections. The JDP fully capitalized on this golden opportunity and swept the polls just fifteen months after its foundation. Erdoğan became prime minister in March 2003 after the ban on his political activity was revoked. The once-quiet headquarters was soon swarmed by people from all over the country who had their own expectations, requests, and hopes. Meanwhile, in the eyes of many outside observers, the JDP was a perfect example of “moderate Islam” demonstrating the compatibility of Muslim faith with democratic and peaceful governance in the post–September 11 era of tensions and conflict. Another “moderate face of Islam” was already in “power” to the east of Turkey , in a rather unexpected setting, the Islamic Republic of Iran. Mohammad Khatami, a middle-ranking cleric and former minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance, was the underdog candidate in the 1997 presidential elections. He 1 M U S L I M R E F O R M E R S I N I R A N A N D T U R K E Y  had few financial and organizational resources at his disposal; he was not the preferred candidate of the Islamist guardians, who controlled key positions of the political regime. Yet he emerged triumphant from the 1997 presidential elections, a victory that took many observers by surprise. Khatami adopted a modest posture, toured the provinces in hopes of reaching the ordinary voters during his campaign, and developed a discourse integrating themes of civil society, popular participation and rule, and rule of law. He seemed to offer a genuine choice to many Iranians who enthusiastically went to the polls. President Khatami set up a new platform called the “Dialogue of Civilizations” and repeatedly expressed his desire to improve Iran’s relationship with the West, including the United States. His presidency inaugurated a new period in which demands for democratic reform were voiced and found public following . Less than three years after Khatami’s victory, his followers loosely organized as the Reform Front (hereafter RF; Jebhe-ye Eslahat or Jebhe-ye Dovom Khordad) and gained the control of the parliament after defeating their rivals in the 2000 elections. For many, these two victories revealed the widespread discontent with the Iranian regime and public desire for substantial political change. The Islamic Republic of Iran, which came into existence following the Revolution of 1979, would be reformed from within. For the first time in the modern history of the Middle East, popularly elected politicians who promised to synthesize democratic governance with Islamic principles gained political prominence. Ironically, the two countries that hosted the rise of the strongest reformist Islamic oppositions in the Middle East were the secularist Turkish regime and the Islamist Iranian regime. Whereas the secularist worldview restricted public expressions of religion, the Islamist worldview established the hegemony of a particular version of religion over the public sphere. This chapter first defines the historical puzzle of Muslim reformism in these two countries. After summarizing plausible explanations that focus on either Iran or Turkey, I offer a comparative explanation informed by moderation theory. I then introduce a revised version of theory that contributes to a better scholarly understanding of the evolution of Iranian and Turkish Muslim reformers. In the last two sections of the chapter, I discuss the methods used...

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