Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics

4. Generation X and the Virtue Party

While Istanbul’s population is pulled toward opposite political and social poles, boundaries blur between the lifestyles, beliefs, interests, goals, and fashions that are meant to represent these poles. Differences in Islamist religious beliefs, political styles, and relations to supporters and to institutions are given a further twist by generational differences. Within the Virtue and Welfare Parties, power struggles over the direction of the party were played out between younger Islamists committed to a populist, integrationist style, with a power base in urban networks, and older leaders whose political style fit within the rigidly centralized, authoritarian, top-down political mold of Turkish political culture. The younger, populist leaders were better able than old-style politicians to dissemble social-class differences within the movement, in part through the inclusiveness of vernacular politics and in part by contrasting their populism with the class arrogance attributed to centrist parties. The Welfare Party was a political party defined by its relation to Islam. Its successor, the Virtue Party, represented itself as a Muslim party defined by its relation to politics. These differing aims and constituencies were already apparent within the Welfare Party. Erbakan himself was a pragmatist, moving from more radical preelection rhetoric about changing the system (to a “Just Order”) to moderation and GENERATION X AND THE VIRTUE PARTY 4 compromise once he was in power. Erbakan’s main constituency, inherited from National Salvation Party days, was made up of conservative followers of religious orders and provincial conservatives, although these had been to some extent co-opted by Özal’s Motherland Party. The Islamist Generation X, on the contrary, was invested in current political issues, not loyalty to regional patrons or religious brotherhoods . Many were urban youth in their twenties and thirties, educated in shabby secular institutions or theological (imam-hatip) schools, desiring upward mobility and economic security, but with few opportunities to participate in the global economy and booming service sector. They were open to new ideas and models of society that would incorporate these aspirations, while retaining an Islamic lifestyle and moral values. Some of the youngest Islamist activists were among the most radical, in the sense of desiring systemic change. A survey found that 45 percent of those who would support an Islamic government were between the ages of fourteen and thirty . By contrast, support for social democratic parties came primarily from voters between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five (Gülalp, Member of the Virtue Party’s Youth Commission greeting Mayor Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at a rally. 132 · Generation X and the Virtue Party 1999a, 35). In other words, while an older generation dissatisfied with the system looked to a social democratic model, Generation X had a great deal more tolerance for a radical Islamist solution. This was particularly true of those locked into an economically disadvantaged class, who were receptive to ideas about social equity, but sensitive to expressions of hierarchy on the part of the messenger. A decentralized , horizontal approach, neighbor to neighbor, held greater appeal than the top-down hierarchies of the political status quo. Erbakan’s preelection speeches were notoriously tailored to suit different audiences, but often contained radical promises and suggestions . His repertoire ranged from bread-and-butter issues like pensions and housing, to support for Kurdish linguistic and cultural rights and environmentalism, to plans to ban the charging of interest and replace the Turkish lira with an Islamic dinar. His proposal for a “Just Economic Order” called for the elimination of social inequality and corruption, state withdrawal from economic activities, and the promotion of individual small enterprise. He pledged to withdraw Turkey from NATO and the European Union’s Customs Union agreement signed in 1996, in favor of political and economic alliances with other Muslim countries. He planned to cultivate a brotherhood of Muslims around the world, thus replacing Turkey’s ties with and reliance on the West. He railed against the new military cooperation agreement with Israel. Much of this was a kind of knee-jerk religious radicalism and populist pandering that had little in common with the more sophisticated critiques of the social and political order by Islamist intellectuals which informed the radicalism of the party’s younger members. After he became prime minister, Erbakan tried to implement some of these ideas. At an assembly of diplomats, he praised the Iranian revolution. In February 1996, he dined with Louis Farrakhan, the American Nation of Islam leader...