Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey: The Paradox of Moderation

CHAPTER 7: Elusive Democratization in the Secular Republic

1 4 2 Elusive Democratization in the Secular Republic C H A P T E R 7 Islamic political movements in Turkey have been primarily organized as electoral parties. In contrast to Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun) in Egypt or the Islamic Daʿwa (Hezb-e al-Daʿwa al-Islamiyya) in Iraq, they have not had cell-based, clandestine, and vanguard-type organizational structures.1 The recurrent theme in forty years of Islamic party activism in Turkey has been the tension between religious party platforms, the dynamics of electoral competition, and secularist rule. Islamist politicians often pursued pragmatic policies at the expense of ideological consistency and integrity. They entered into coalitions and electoral alliances with parties they had previously condemned in the 1970s and 1990s. As strategic actors seeking votes and political office, Muslim politicians faced the dilemma of challenging the legitimacy of the secular regime while acting under legal constraints. From a comparative perspective, the authoritarian conditions that played into the hands of radical Islamists in the late 1970s in Iran were absent in Turkey. Islamists failed to mobilize a broad coalition against the secular regime in the pluralistic and highly competitive Turkish political environment. A primary reason for this failure was the diversity of Muslim responses to Turkish secularist modernization, ranging from enthusiastic acceptance to passive resistance, from pragmatic accommodation to outright opposition. Islamists had to contend with this diversity, which often favored center-right parties, to mobilize a sustained and direct challenge to the modernity project by the republic.2 Another factor limiting the appeal of Turkish Islamists was the absence of an autonomous and popular clerical establishment in Turkey that might have led the opposition against the secular regime, as in the case of Iran. Turkish Islamists were led by lay people who could not claim mastery of E L U S I V E D E M O C R AT I Z AT I O N I N T H E S E C U L A R R E P U B L I C 1 4 3 religious knowledge and jurisdiction as did Khomeini and his associates. They had to constantly negotiate with popular Sufi sheiks and brotherhoods and state-appointed clergy in their quest for popular support. The fact that popular and Sufi religious identities did not always overlap with political identities propagated by the Islamists limited the appeal of Islamist political parties. Besides , a full understanding of the evolution of Islamic politics requires a focus on center-right parties in Turkish politics. Center-right parties contributed to the development of a competitive and pluralistic political environment in two ways. First, they were instrumental in the integration of marginalized conservative and pious citizens into the legal and electoral system in the 1950s and 1960s. Second, they limited the appeal of Islamists. Center-Right: The Pivotal Player in Turkish Politics According to an influential paradigm, the prevailing cleavage in Turkish politics was the struggle between center and periphery at least until the 1970s.3 The forces of the center were the bureaucracy, the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF), the intelligentsia, the professional urban classes, and the Republican People’s Party (RPP; Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi).4 The center, which ruled the country until the first free elections in 1950, generally advocated a strict interpretation of secularist nationalism that limited public expressions of religion. In contrast, the periphery, which was led by elites who had defected from the RPP and represented rural peasants and nascent commercial and industrialist classes, had a more lax understanding of secularism and was more receptive to popular demands and tolerant toward religion. The Democratic Party (DP), representing the periphery and supported by the Turkish bourgeoisie, came to power in 1950 and won three consecutive elections before being overthrown by a military coup in 1960.5 The DP leadership’s understanding of democracy rested on the majoritarian notion of “popular will” and had little room for separation of powers.6 The party advocated a more liberal understanding of secularism. According to Ali Fuat Başgil, who was an advisor to the DP government , secularism must not obscure religious freedoms. These freedoms include, among others, the unfettered dissemination of religious knowledge. Secularism does not involve the state’s control of religion but the complete separation of the two.7 With the 1960s, the center gradually evolved into the center-left while the M...