Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics

6. Civil Society: In Whose Service?

Civic groups provided arenas within which Islamist activism was coordinated. In Ümraniye, neighborhood cells supported party– related associations, an Islamic charity foundation, and the municipality . Although they worked closely together, the foundation insisted upon its autonomy from both party and municipal administration. The foundation directors and activists clearly wished to impress upon me that they were not linked to the party except by sentiment and membership. Since it was illegal for a civic organization to be directly linked to a political party, this insistence upon autonomy was not surprising. However, they explained their claim to autonomy differently . They considered themselves to be participants in a social movement to which the party was important, but ultimately inconsequential . What the party provided for the movement was a national framework, reinforced and orchestrated by intricately detailed computerized data banks on individual neighborhoods like Ümraniye. The Islamic foundation itself had limited resources, but coordinated the activities of Islamist businessmen as donors and board members, of Welfare Party officials, members of party-related associations, and local Islamist activists and their neighborhood networks. In other words, civic organizations like the Islamic charity foundation cannot be described simply as formally autonomous of a CIVIL SOCIETY: IN WHOSE SERVICE? 6 political party or informally co-opted by it, but must be seen as linked in practice to both a party and a social movement rooted in the community . This presents the seeming paradox of an autonomous civic organization engaged in grassroots mobilizing while also participating in a project of social monitoring and control by a political party. This paradox dissolves if civil society is seen not as a form of organization , but as part of a larger picture, that is, as part of a political and cultural process that extends beyond the organizational boundaries of any particular institution. Civil society, in this broader rendering, incorporates personal, kin, and ethnic relations on the one hand, and civic and political institutions on the other, linking them in practice, rather than artificially separating out “cultural,” civic, and political domains. Foundations have played a particularly important role in Islamist mobilization in Turkey, even though, in terms of numbers, associations have grown at a more rapid rate. The long Ottoman history of foundations and their relatively low profile over much of the Republican period have given them a cachet of respectability and the advantage of less state supervision than the more recent associations. Since their implication in the violent ideological factionalism of the 1960s and 1970s, the state has tightly controlled the activities of associations . Nevertheless, they have proliferated. The numbers, however , may be misleading. Polls show that working-class people, especially women, tend not to join associations. How, then, do they participate in civic and political life? Foundations, while numerically less common, nonetheless serve a bridging function between people as they are situated in their personal networks and civic and political activities. Thus, foundations link and mobilize people whose involvement would not be apparent in “membership” counts. Setting foundations and associations within this broader framework of relations also requires a reexamination of claims of autonomy . If civic activity involves informal and unacknowledged links with personal and party networks, examination of the organization’s formal structure and activities alone may not reveal the broader ideological context within which it operates. Much as foundations may support and facilitate implementation of an Islamist ideology, the middle-class bias of associational life in Turkey may point to a pervasive Kemalist, feminist, or other ideological bias. Civil Society: In Whose Service? · 179 Welfare’s Web The Welfare Party presided over a network of independent, interlocking support groups that was the envy of all other parties. In addition to the party’s formal representation at the provincial, municipal, and neighborhood levels, informally linked associations and groups of activists rooted the party in every block, in every street. This organizational level had been achieved in almost every province of the country, so that Welfare Party activists could boast that there was no place they could not reach with their election message (Seufert, 1997, 333). It is important to note that this organizational network was independent of religious orders and religious communities, just as much of it was structurally independent of the Welfare Party itself, although personnel, activities, and, in some cases, financial support were coordinated or shared. (It was illegal for a political party to directly fund a civic organization.) Information about local needs and activities and...