Islamist Parties and Political Normalization in the Muslim World

2. When Is Normalization Also Democratization? Islamist Political Parties, the Turkish Case, and the Future of Muslim Polities

Chapter 2 When Is Normalization Also Democratization? Islamist Political Parties, the Turkish Case, and the Future of Muslim Polities murat somer What does normalization mean in an electoral democracy with considerable majoritarian and authoritarian characteristics? This chapter examines what we learn from the Turkish case regarding how Islamist political parties behave and sometimes become normalized in response to electoral, competitive politics as well as secularist constraints. I also explore what kinds of changes their normalization might entail and how this might affect democracy. The relationship between democratization and the participation of religious actors in politics is multifaceted and contingent.1 Thus, I will try to identify and conceptualize when and to what extent the normalization of religious politics might also contribute to democratization. I will do so through a cross-temporal examination of Turkish democracy and political Islam since the 1970s. I contend that the transformation of Turkish Islamists since the 1990s illustrates how electoral incentives combined with nonelectoral, authoritarian interventions can bring about the normalization of Islamism. This normalization includes compromises with the country’s mainstream politics, society, and international political and economic linkages. The Turkish case also shows the democratic implications of normalization if a country lacks the values, institutions, and relationships of a fully democratic ‘‘center’’ and Islamist and secularist actors fail to cooperate for democratic reforms.2 Normalization has enabled Turkish Islamists to expand their constituency, When Is Normalization Also Democratization? 41 find liberal and secular domestic and international allies, and rule the country since 2002 by winning three consecutive national elections and a crucial constitutional referendum in 2010. But the implications for democratization indicate a double-edged relationship between normalization and democratization in the context of a flawed democracy. On one hand, Turkish Islamists used these benefits of normalization to make Turkey considerably more democratic in many respects. In particular, they raised the income level, curtailed militaristic and judicial tutelage, and allowed pious Turks, who previously felt disadvantaged, more access to mainstream social and political life. On the other hand, democratization suffered as Turkish Islamists instrumentalized their ‘‘normalcy’’ for their own material and ideological purposes. They began to exclude secular rivals, became increasingly intolerant of opposition and secular freedoms, and embarked on Islamic social engineering, especially after liberating themselves from nonelectoral constraints. In many ways, Islamists began to reproduce many authoritarian characteristics of mainstream Turkish politics and the state-society relationship in such a way that they now favor and serve Islamic-conservative elites, communities, and values at the expense of others. The inability of weak secular opposition to democratically check and balance the Islamists contributed to this outcome. Democratization is a multidimensional process and the normalization of Islamists generated progress in some dimensions while producing regression in others. Islamism has been a dynamic and important social, political, and ideological current in Turkey since the nineteenth century.3 Yet until recently secular republicanism primarily shaped what was considered ‘‘normal’’ or ‘‘mainstream’’ in Turkish politics and society. This is because secular nationalists oppressed and excluded the Islamist opposition when they unilaterally shaped the mainstream institutions and values of the republic during the 1920s and 1930s.4 Political Islam, which had previously found limited expression in center-right political parties, entered the political scene with the formation of the first explicitly Islamist parties during the 1970s. Since then, these parties have proved themselves to be shrewd political actors and modern electoral machines with a remarkable ability to embrace selective features of mainstream Turkish politics. At the same time, they gradually transformed mainstream politics by contesting elections, participating in governments, having their supporters enter the state bureaucracy, and politicizing new 42 Murat Somer issues, identities, and values, which mainstream parties felt compelled to address. Hence, they simultaneously played a participatory-electoral and a ‘‘regime delegitimation’’ game with respect to mainstream politics.5 They also invented new political and discursive strategies and adapted to changing domestic and external circumstances. Nevertheless, until the 1990s these parties were relatively small with an antisystemic orientation and came to power only as junior partners in coalition governments. Thus, they were not perceived as part of ‘‘normal’’ politics and catered to a narrow ideological constituency. In 1996, the Welfare Party (RP) became the first Islamist party to win a national election and came to power as the senior partner of a coalition government. The shortlived RP government fell as a result of a vicious, military-induced secularist campaign.6 In 2002...