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Enlightenment by Fiat: Secularization and Democracy in Turkey

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 41; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00263200500105984

1743-7881

Haldun Gülalp,

Islamic Studies and History

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes This article has long been in the making, due to intermittent attention over the years, and I have accumulated a number of debts along the way. Initially drafted as a reflection on the events of 1996–97 in Turkey, when an Islamist government was formed and then overthrown, successive versions of this article were presented at the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association in San Francisco, CA (22–24 Nov. 1997), in the Mediterranean Programme Seminar Series of the European University Institute in Florence, Italy (30 March 2000), and at the annual conference of the Social Theory Consortium in Dubrovnik, Croatia (1–4 July 2002). Successive drafts benefited from comments by numerous colleagues who read or heard the article. Those that I can actually identify include Virginia Aksan, Schirin Amir-Moazami, Fatma Müge Göçek, Nikki Keddie, Robert Lee, Ayşe Öncü, Günter Seufert, Nükhet Sirman, and Jenny White. The final draft was prepared while on a fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (2002–03). I am grateful to all persons and institutions named above. See Wolfgang Sachs (ed.), The Development Dictionary (London: Zed Press, 1992); Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). See, e.g., the classic, Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press,1964); see also Enver Ziya Karal, 'The Principles of Kemalism', in Ergun Özbudun and Ali Kazancıgil (eds.), Atatürk: Founder of a Modern State (London: C. Hurst & Co, 1981). See, e.g., on India: Subrata Kumar Mitra, 'Desecularising the State: Religion and Politics in India after Independence', Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.33, No.4 (1991); Sudipta Kaviraj, 'Modernity and Politics in India', Daedalus, Vol.129, No.1 (2000). Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p.7. Ernest Gellner, 'The Turkish Option in Comparative Perspective' in Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba (eds.), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle: Washington University Press, 1997), pp.233–4. Bernard Lewis, Islam and the West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p.135. See, e.g., Aziz Al-Azmeh, 'Islamic Studies and the European Imagination', in idem, Islams and Modernities (London: Verso, 1993); Mohammed Arkoun, Rethinking Islam (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994); Nikki R. Keddie, 'The Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993: Comparative Considerations and Relations to Imperialism', Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.36, No.3 (1994); Sami Zubaida, Islam, the People and the State (London: Routledge, 1991); Sami Zubaida, 'Is There a Muslim Society? Ernest Gellner's Sociology of Islam', Economy and Society, Vol.24, No.2, (1995). Sadik J. Al-'Azm, 'Is Islam Secularizable?' in Elisabeth Özdalga and Sune Persson (eds), Civil Society, Democracy and the Muslim World (Istanbul: Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul, Transactions, Vol.7, 1997), p.18. Lewis, Islam and the West, p.39 See Ervand Abrahamian, Khomeinism: Essays on the Islamic Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). Sadik J. Al-'Azm, 'Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse', Khamsin, No.8 (1981), p.22. Lewis, Islam and the West, p.149. Ibid., p.150. See Eviatar Zerubavel, The Seven Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week (New York: The Free Press, 1985), pp.28–34. Maxime Rodinson, Europe and the Mystique of Islam (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987), pp.60–1. See Samir Amin, Eurocentrism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989). See Judith Berman, 'Bad Hair Day in the Paleolithic: Modern (Re)Constructions of the Cave Man', American Anthropologist, Vol.101, No.2, (1999). See, e.g., Jose Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Nikki R. Keddie, 'Secularism and the State: Towards Clarity and Global Comparison', New Left Review, No.226 (1997); Peter van der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann (eds), Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, (1999). Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World (London: Routledge, 1991), p.30. Ibid., pp.27–34. Samir Amin, Unequal Development (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976). Max Weber, 'Patriarchalism and Patrimonialism', in Idem, Economy and Society, edited by G. Roth and C. Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), p.1070. Ibid., pp.1010–13. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961); Halil İnalcık, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age (New Rochelle, NY: Orpheus Publishing, 1989). Amin, Eurocentrism compare Weber, Economy and Society, pp.583–9. İnalcık, Ottoman Empire, pp.169–171. Ibid., p.94; Haim Gerber, State, Society and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), pp.78–112. Henri Pirenne, A History of Europe (New York: University Books, 1955). Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1985), p.48. Compare: Emile Durkheim, 'Moral Education' (1925), in W.S.F. Pickering (ed.), Durkheim on Religion (London: R & K Paul, 1975). Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966); R.W. Harris, Absolutism and Enlightenment, 1660–1789 (New York: Harper & Row, 1966); Lucien Goldmann, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973). Adam J. Lerner, 'Transcendence of the Nation: National Identity and the Terrain of the Divine, Millenium: Journal of International Studies, Vol.20, No.3 (1991), p.407; see, also, Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975). Anthony Smith, 'The Nation: Invented, Imagined, Reconstructed?', Millenium: Journal of International Studies, Vol.20, No.3 (1991). Josep R. Llobera, The God of Modernity: The Development of Nationalism in Western Europe (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1994), pp.143–6; see, also, Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, revised edition, 1991), p.11. Robert N. Bellah, Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pp.168–89. Türk İnkılap Tarihi Enstitüsü, Atatürk'ün Söylev ve Demeçleri (Vol.1, Ankara, 1990), p.74 Şerif Mardin, 'Religion and Secularism in Turkey', in Ergun Özbudun and Ali Kazancıgil (eds), Atatürk: Founder of a Modern State (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1981), pp.207–8; Binnaz Toprak, Islam and Political Development in Turkey (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1981), p.66; Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London: Routledge, 1993), p.48. Karal, 'Principles of Kemalism'. Kemal Kirişçi, 'Disaggregating Turkish Citizenship and Immigration Practices' Middle Eastern Studies, Vol.36, No.3 (2000). Toprak, Islam and Political Development; Keddie, 'Secularism and the State', pp.31–2. For a detailed account, see: Mete Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti'nde Tek Parti Yönetiminin Kurulması (1923–1931) (Ankara: Yurt Yayınları, 1981), pp.225–40. Gellner, 'The Turkish Option', pp.233, 236. Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (New York: Allen Lane, 1994), pp.199–200. Ergun Özbudun, 'Turkey: Crises, Interruptions, and Requilibrations', in Larry Diamond, Juan Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset (eds), Democracy in Developing Countries: Asia, Vol.3 (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1989), p.197. Ibid., p.187. Ergun Özbudun, Contemporary Turkish Politics: Challenges to Democratic Consolidation (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2000), p.1. See Rebecca Bryant, 'An Aesthetic of Self: Moral Remaking and Cypriot Education', Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol.43, No.3, (2001). Lewis, Islam and the West, p.33. Ibid., pp.33–4. R.G. Latham, Russian and Turk, from a Geographical, Ethnological, and Historic Point of View (London, 1878), p.160, quoted in Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London: I.B.Tauris, 1998), p.136. Another striking example of this is cited by Eric Hobsbawm, who observes that 'liberal' legislation under Napoleon III 'opened citizenship to the native Algerian' provided that a condition was met: 'All he had to give up, in effect, was Islam; if he did not want to do so – and few did – then he remained a subject and not a citizen.' E.J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution (London: Abacus, 1977), p.241. Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed., 1968), pp.106–28; Carter V. Findley, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp.152–8; Mardin, 'Religion and Secularism in Turkey', pp.195–6. See Berkes, Development of Secularism. See Findley, Bureaucratic Reform and Carter V. Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962); Mümtaz'er Türköne, Siyasi İdeoloji Olarak İslamcılığın Doğuşu (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 1991). Keddie, 'Revolt of Islam'. Mardin, Genesis, p.404. Deringil, Well-Protected Domains. Ibid., p.165. Ibid., pp.154–7. Toprak, Islam and Political Development, p.40. Compare: Keddie, 'Secularism and the State'. Richard Tapper and Nancy Tapper, 'Religion, Education and Continuity in a Provincial Town', in Richard Tapper (ed.), Islam in Modern Turkey (London: I.B. Tauris, 1991). Ibid., p.76. İlter Turan, 'Religion and Political Culture in Turkey', in Richard Tapper (ed.), Islam in Modern Turkey (London: I.B. Tauris, 1991), p.50. Ibid. Mümtaz Soysal, 100 Soruda Anayasanın Anlamı (İstanbul: Gerçek Yayınları, 1974), p.171. Falih Rıfkı Atay, Çankaya (Ankara, 1968), pp.386–7. See Ümit Cizre Sakallıoğlu, 'Parameters and Strategies of Islam-State Interaction in Republican Turkey', International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.28, No.2 (1996). Lerner, 'Transcendence of the Nation', p.419. Ibid., p.420. Faruk Nafiz, Kahraman (Ankara, 1933), pp.37–8. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p.12. Etienne Copeaux, Türk Tarih Tezinden Türk-Islam Sentezine (İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1998), pp.93–115; Büşra Ersanlı, İktidar ve Tarih (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2003). Atay, Çankaya, p.295. Turan, 'Religion and Political Culture', p.50. See, also, Hülya Adak, 'National Myths and Self-Na(rr)ations: Mustafa Kemal's Nutuk and Halide Edip's Memoirs and The Turkish Ordeal', South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol.102, No.2/3 (2003), pp.512–8, for an analysis of Atatürk's 'prophet-like qualities' in The Speech. Günter Seufert, 'The Sacred Aura of the Turkish Flag' New Perspectives on Turkey, No.16 (1997), p.57. Michael Meeker, 'Once There Was, Once There Wasn't: National Monuments and Interpersonal Exchange', in Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba (eds), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle: Washington University Press, 1997). Semra Somersan, 'Yasaklı Şehir' Radikal Iki (Aug.1997). Carol Delaney, The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in Turkish Village Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p.282. See, also, Vamık Volkan and Norman Itzkowitz, Immortal Ataturk (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984), pp.345–6. See Feroz Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment in Democracy, 1950–75 (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1977), pp.41–4. ATV Evening News (16 Dec. 1997). Deniz Kandiyoti, 'Emancipated but not Liberated? Reflections on the Turkish Case' Feminist Studies, Vol.13, No.2 (1987), and 'Women and the Turkish State: Political Actors or Symbolic Pawns?', in Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias (eds), Woman-Nation-State (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989). Zehra F. Arat, 'Turkish Women and the Republican Reconstruction of Tradition', in Fatma Müge Göçek and Shiva Balaghi (eds), Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), p.58. Deniz Kandiyoti, 'Gendering the Modern: On Missing Dimensions in the Study of Turkish Modernity', in Sibel Bozdoğan and Reşat Kasaba (eds), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Seattle: Washington University Press, 1997), pp.116–07; Arat, 'Turkish Women', pp.59–62. Henry Elisha Allen, The Turkish Transformation: A Study in Social and Religious Development (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935), p.6. Kandiyoti, 1997, 'Gendering the Modern', p.122. Arat, 'Turkish Women', p.61. See Emelie A. Olson, 'Muslim Identity and Secularism in Contemporary Turkey: The Headscarf Dispute', Anthropological Quarterly, Vol.58, No.4 (1985); Nilüfer Göle, The Forbidden Modern: Civilization and Veiling (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1996); Yeşim Arat, 'Group-Differentiated Rights and the Liberal Democratic State: Rethinking the Headscarf Controversy in Turkey', New Perspectives on Turkey, No.25, (2001). These arguments are gathered from public announcements published in the daily press. See, also, Yeşim Arat, 'Group-Differentiated Rights', pp.38–40. Delaney, The Seed and the Soil, pp.284–5. See, e.g., A.I. Sabra, 'The Appropriation and Subsequent Naturalization of Greek Science in Medieval Islam: A Preliminary Statement' in F. Jamil Ragep and Sally P. Ragep (eds), Tradition, Transmission, Transformation (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996).