One of the successor states created from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire after World War 1, Turkey became the first secular state in the Muslim world. The new state in Asia Minor (or Anatolia) was declared a republic in October 1923 after the defeat of the Greek army and the sultan’s forces in a bitter civil war. The abandonment of the shari’ah and the adoption of a secular legal system based on Western codes of law, as well as the declaration of a secular republic in 1928, were radical departures from tradition. The new Turkey was predominantly Muslim, with non-Muslims accounting for only 2.6 percent of the population in 1927. There were many who argued that retaining such Islamic symbols as the caliphate would provide legitimacy for the new regime. Until 1924 Turkey had been the seat of the caliphate, and from the very genesis of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish state and society had been deeply influenced by Islamic traditions and culture, especially the tradition of the gazi (Ar., ghazi) warrior. Not surprisingly, Kemal AtaWrk, the founder of the republic, enjoyed the honorific “Gazi” into the 1930s.
Asia Minor had been penetrated by Turks and Muslims in the eleventh century, although the conquest of the region came only after the Seljuks defeated the Byzantines in 1071. By the thirteenth century, when the Ottoman state was created, Islam was well established under the influence of such Sufi dervish orders as the Naqshbandiyah, Mawlawiyah, Malamiyah, and Bektashiyah (Tk., Naksibendi, Mevlevi, Melami, and Bektasi). Not only were these orders influential among the people, but many sultans too were followers of their shaykhs. Even under a strong state with its own ideology based on Sunni Islam of the Hanafi school, the influence of Sufi orders and the Wema (Tk., ulema), the guardians of state Islam, remained considerable. The heterodox Bektashiyah order was particularly influential because of its intimate connection with the Janissary corps, the heart of the Ottoman army. They retained their influence until the destruction of the Janissaries in 1826, when the order was abolished and driven underground; other orders, especially the Naqshbandiyah, were allowed to flourish throughout the empire. [See Janissaries.]
The balance between the official Islam of the ulema and the popular, folk Islam of the Sufis began to turn in favor of the ulema in the eighteenth century. This was part of the process of centralizing power and modernizing the state in order to meet the challenge of the West. The Sufi orders were viewed as a conservative force in society and an obstacle to westernization. The orders, as well as the ulema, had been able to maintain a certain autonomy vis-a-vis the state thanks to the revenues of religious foundations or awqaf (Tk., Evkaf; sg., vakf ). But the sultans began to restore their authority over these foundations, and finally Mahmud II (r. 1808-i839) brought them under the control of the newly created Inspectorate (later Ministry) of Evkaf. He also incorporated the ulema into his remodeled state by creating an official office for the Shaykh al-Islam known as the Bab-i Mashihat or Fetvahane. The Shaykh alIslam was transformed into a civil servant with advisory and consultative functions; later he became a member of the cabinet appointed by the sultan.
The process of rationalizing and secularizing the state-and to a lesser extent the society-continued until the founding of the republic in 1923. The Tanzimat reforms (1839-1876) accelerated this trend, and an 1869 law established the right to Ottoman citizenship regardless of religious affiliation. The opening of modern schools like Robert College (1863) and Galatasaray (1868) introduced education in a foreign language, marking an important stage toward religious desegregation. [See Tanzimat. ]
Meanwhile, however, the Ottoman regime stressed the Islamic character of state and society as a response to the growing nationalism of its Christian subjects and increasing imperialist encroachments on Muslim lands in Asia and Africa. The sultans, especially Abdiilhamid II, emphasized Islamic solidarity and their own role as the caliphs of all Muslims. This trend continued throughout the Young Turk period, and even the Kemalists fought the war of liberation mainly on the plank of a religious ideology. Mustafa Kemal (later known as Ataturk) was quite emphatic about this, noting on 1 May 1920 that the “nation whose preservation and defense we have undertaken is composed not only of one ethnic element [i.e., the Turks]. It is composed of various Islamic elements,” which he described as Circassians, Kurds, and Lazes. [See Young Turks and the biographies of Abdidhamid II and Ataturk.]
The Islamic component of Turkish nationalism was bound to be strong because the majority of the new nation’s people were Muslims. The composition of the population within the borders of the new republic had changed dramatically between 1914 and the census of 1927; the non-Muslim population had declined from 20 to 2.6 percent and continued to decline thereafter. But secularization may not have been so radical or so swift had the conservatives not used Islam to challenge Kemalist leadership. After dissolving the sultanate in 1922, the Kemalists toyed with the idea of retaining the caliph as a symbolic figurehead; however, the ambitions of Caliph Abdulmecid, supported by Mustafa Kemal’s opponents, forced the government to act swiftly and abolish the caliphate on 3 March 1924. All educational institutions were placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Instructions, and a Directorate of Religious Affairs under the prime minister was given charge of “all cases and concerns of the exalted Islamic faith which relate to dogma and ritual.” [See Caliph.]
The Kurdish rebellion of February 1925 led by the Naqshbandi Shaykh Sa`id prompted the creation of an extraordinary regime that lasted until 4 March 1929. The Kemalists utilized these four years to launch a program of reforms that effectively removed Islam from political life and secularized society. The dervish orders and sacred tombs were closed down in November 1925, and practices such as fortunetelling, magic, and cures by breathing performed by shaykhs, babas, seyyids, murshids, dedes, and celebis became illegal. The wearing of the fez, a symbol of Muslim identity, was outlawed, and men were required to wear hats. The Gregorian calendar was adopted along with the twenty-four-hour clock. The Swiss civil code, adapted to Turkey’s conditions, replaced the shafah on 17 January 1926, depriving the ulema of their traditional source of influence. Later, in April 1928, the Assembly voted to remove the words “The religion of the Turkish state is Islam” from Article 2 of the constitution, completing the process of disestablishing Islam. Meanwhile, a committee set up to study the implementation of an “Islamic reformation” presented its findings. It recommended, among other things, introducing pews into mosques and sacred instrumental music into the service. These proposals were too radical, and the committee was quickly disbanded, suggesting that the government had no intention of alienating Muslim opinion. However, the committee’s proposal to replace Arabic with Turkish as the liturgical language of Islam was adopted a few years later.
The purpose of these radical reforms was not antiIslamic but political: to remove from the jurisdiction of religious leaders and their political allies all legal, social, and educational institutions and place them in the hands of the Directorate of Religious Affairs. The state would then direct religious energy toward its own socioeconomic program. One of the reformers defined a secular government as “one which transfers the leadership in religious affairs from the ignorant to the enlightened,” and the Kemalist daily Hakimiyet-i Milliye (3o December 1925) editorialized, “We can sincerely claim that our Revolution has more of a religious than an irreligious character as it has saved consciences from harmful tyranny and domination. . . . To think that a nation can live without any religion is nothing less than denying humanity, sociology, and history.”
Islam became an instrument of government policy. It was recognized as a vital component of the nation’s cultural constitution and mobilized to enhance national unity and instill civic virtues. Prayers, especially Friday prayers in the mosque, were encouraged because they instilled discipline and a sense of community; fasting “builds endurance and patience,” while giving zakat (Tk., zekat, “alms”) “stimulates one’s sense of generosity.” The Friday sermon was specially written to educate the mosque-going public (especially the illiterate) in civic duties. They were told that their religious obligations (farz) included paying taxes, doing military service, cooperating with the government, and being loyal and obedient citizens. Islam was presented as a rational and scientific religion (“our Prophet informs us that science is essential for a Believer’); it was open to innovation (“Muslims do not hesitate to accept new movements”) and national (“every nation addresses God in its own tongue”). Specially trained military chaplains were assigned to the army and religious instruction made a part of the military routine.
This pragmatic attitude toward Islam might have continued had not circumstances in the early 1930s convinced the regime of the need for a more aggressive ideology. The world economic crisis and the appeal of Italian fascism and Soviet communism in these difficult times were two contributing factors. The more immediate stimulus was the failure of the multiparty experiment of August-November 1930; political liberalization and the formation of the Free Party encouraged an Islamist reaction against the secular regime. Even more traumatic was the Menemen Incident of December 1930, in which Dervish Mehmed, a Naqshbandi devotee, called on the people to destroy the impious regime. He beheaded an officer sent to quell the disturbance, yet no one in the crowd intervened to defend the state. The Kemalist elite was shocked that citizens of the republic had stood by and even applauded Dervish Mehmed. The people had failed to understand the reforms, and that had to be rectified.
The ideology known as Kemalism was launched in May 1931 and written into the constitution in 1937. Its core was the six “fundamental and unchanging principles of Republicanism, Nationalism, Populism, Statism, Secularism, and Revolutionism.” Islam was “nationalized” in January 1932, with the Qur’an being read in Turkish, followed by the Turkish call to prayer in 1933 Although the regime became more consciously secular, Islam was still mobilized for civic ends. Mosques continued to disseminate propaganda in favor of the national economy, and mosques and churches were told to urge their congregations to contribute generously to the Turkish Aviation Society. [See Kemalism.]
There were signs of liberalization following the death of President Ataturk in November 1938. His successor, Ismet Inonu, wanted to build a consensus and therefore permitted members of the old opposition, more sympathetic to Islam, to enter politics. A real relaxation of militant secularism, however, came only after the introduction of multiparty politics in 1945, when the ruling Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (Republican People’s Party, CHP) recognized that the competition for votes against the Demokrat Parti (Democrat Party, DP) required the manipulation of Islam. Islam also became an important weapon in the cold war against Moscow as well as against left-wing dissidents at home. Consequently the CHP, the party of secularism, began to undo some of its earlier reforms. In 1948 pilgrims were permitted to visit Mecca. The following year, courses to train prayerleaders and preachers were set up, and a Faculty of Theology (Ilahiyat) was opened in Ankara in October. Also in 1949 religious education was restored to the classroom, and sacred tombs that had been closed down in 1925 were reopened.
Despite these concessions, the Republicans lost the election in 1950. The Democrats continued the policy of liberalization and gained great popularity, especially by restoring the Arabic ezan (call to prayer) in June 195o and lifting the ban on religious radio broadcasts. Turkish voters, however, responded not so much to these religious concessions but to the DP’s development policies, which transformed Turkish society by opening up the country with roads, mechanized agriculture, and provided farm subsidies, bringing a level of prosperity peasants had never known. As election results have consistently shown, voters supported the parties they thought would improve their material life. [See Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi and Demokrat Parti.
With political liberalization, the Islamic sentiment that had gone underground reemerged and became vocal. More people attended mosques, and new ones were built throughout the land. There was a growing demand for religious literature that was met by writers who had been biding their time. These developments exposed the fundamental weakness of the Kemalist reforms-their failure to reach deeply into society. Only the cities and large towns benefited under Kemalism and developed a small class committed to it. The countryside remained virtually untouched by the benefits of modern education, and literacy grew only slowly. Thus, even though the social institutions associated with the dervish orders were destroyed, their influence remained strong and began to reassert itself by 1950. Nonetheless, there was no question of going back to an Islamist order under the shafah or permitting the Sufi orders to stand in the way of change. Both the DP and the CHP were committed to change; when some Sufi orders attempted to regain their influence, their leaders were prosecuted with the full force of the law-the Tijanis, Nagshbandis, and Mevlevis in 195o, and the Qadiris in 1951, all by the supposedly pro-Islamist DP. In time the religious orders became appendages of certain parties, exercising influence and patronage through them. The Democrats began to exploit Islam for political ends only after 1957 when their power waned as a result of economic setbacks. A political deadlock with the opposition triggered the military coup of May 196o, which opened a new chapter in the political life of modern Turkey.
The military regime accelerated Turkey’s transformation to an industrial society by introducing new institutions, including a liberal constitution that guaranteed, among other things, social justice, the right to strike, and freedom of expression. As a result a Workers’ Party (Turkiye Isci Partisi) was formed and challenged the policies of the ruling classes from the left. The establishment responded by mobilizing “Islam as the antidote to communism,” the catchword for any criticism aimed at rectifying the socioeconomic problems in Turkish society. The polarization between left and right soon assumed a religious character. As a result Turkey’s Alevis (Ar., `Alawiyah), a heterodox offshoot of Shiism who make up an estimated 8 million out of the current (1992) population of 52 million, came under attack from the right. They were accused of being leftists even though their only sin was to be longtime supporters of the secular CHP. Finding that the CHP no longer satisfied their political needs, they formed the Unity Party
(Birlik Partisi) in October 1966, though they have never identified it as an Alevi party.
A major consequence of the rapid economic growth of the 1960s-about 7 percent a year between 1963 and 1973-was the concentration of economic power in a few large conglomerates. This process undermined the small producers and merchants of Anatolia, who responded by withdrawing their political support from the principal party of the right, the justice Party (Adalet Partisi), the DP’s successor. They formed splinter parties like the conservative Democratic Party (Demokratik Partisi), the neofascist Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetci Harekit Partisi), and the National Order Party (Milli Nizam Partisi, MNP), the first openly Islamist party of the republic.
The MNP was led by Necmettin Erbakan, an engineer trained in Germany, who also enjoyed the support of the Nagshband-is. He was a new politician who emerged in the 1960s to fill the vacuum left by the Democrats, disqualified from political life by the junta. He was provincial rather than cosmopolitan in outlook and had nothing in common with the old elite except the ambition to develop the country. Such people were willing to adopt Western technology to create a modern, capitalist economy, but they were at home in the culture they associated with Islam and were contemptuous of the imported Western culture they identified with loose morals and decadence. The MNP never called for the restoration of the shariah; they campaigned only for a national economy independent of foreign control and a national culture based on Ottoman-Islamic traditions and free of corrupting fashions imported from the West.
The party was banned by the military regime in 1971 but regrouped as the National Salvation Party (Milli Selamet Partisi, MSP) in 1973. In the next general election the MSP garnered 11 percent of the vote and became the coalition partner of the social democratic CHP, as both shared a similar economic program. When the coalition broke up, Erbakan continued to play a significant role in new coalition governments led by the Justice Party. This gave him considerable powers of patronage, which he exercised on behalf of his supporters, especially the Naqshbandis. As a result Islamists were soon entrenched throughout the bureaucracy, posing a threat to secular education.
The MSP was banned again by the military junta that seized power in September 1980. When political activity was partially restored in 1983, the Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi) led by Turgut Ozal, a former member of the MSP, assumed the mantle of political Islam. But Muslim opinion in Turkey, radicalized by the Iranian revolution, wanted a more militant party to support. Initially the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, RP), the MSP reincarnated, attempted but failed to meet these radical expectations. After failure in the 1987 election the party changed its strategy and emphasized “the struggle against feudalism, imperialism, and fascism.” The strategy paid off, and the RP, in coalition with the neofascist Nationalist Labor Party (Milliyetci Calisma Partisi), won 17.2 percent of the vote in 1 99 1 . It also fared well in local elections in 1993, winning municipalities in squatter and working-class areas, but it was still far from winning power throughout the country. [See Refah Partisi; Anavatan Partisi; and the biographies of Erbakan and Ozal. ]
Generally speaking, Turkey in the 1990s is a country that feels comfortable with Islamic political and cultural discourse. It has become part of the Islamic world and participates in most of its activities, often playing a leadership role. It sees itself as a bridge between the West and the Islamic world and takes its Islamic identity seriously. This trend is likely to continue, although there is one alarming development that may impede further progress. A spate of political assassinations of prominent secularist intellectuals and journalists, allegedly by proIranian groups, threatens to bring about repression against Islamist organizations, just as similar crimes led to repression of the left in the 1970s and 1980s.
[See also Bektash-iyah; Mevlevi; Naqshbandiyah, and Ottoman Empire.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, Henry Elisha. The Turkish Transformation (1935). New York, 1968. Perceptive account of social and religious developments in Kemalist Turkey.
Barnes, John Robert, An Introduction to Religious Foundations in the Ottoman Empire. Leiden, 1986. Excellent source for information on the rise and fall of the vakfs.
Berkes, Niyazi. The Development of Secularism in Turkey. Montreal, 1964. The best book on the subject for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the early republic.
Birge, John Kingsley. The Bektashi Order of Dervishes (1937). New York, 1982. Fine scholarly study of a neglected subject.
Gibb, H. A. R., and Harold Bowen. Islamic Society and the West. Vol. 1, parts 1-2. London and New York, 1950-1957. Somewhat dated but most informative about Ottoman society and institutions in the eighteenth century.
Lewis, Bernard. The Emergence of Modern Turkey. 2d ed. London and New York, 1968. Authoritative account of reforms in the Kemalist period up to the early fifties.
Rustow, Dankwart A. “Politics and Islam in Turkey, 1920-1935.” In Islam and the West, edited by Richard N. Frye, pp. 69-107. The Hague, 1957. Stimulating and full of original ideas.
Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. Islam in Modern History. Princeton, 1957. A most stimulating chapter on “Turkey: Islamic Reformation?” Tapper, Richard, ed. Islam in Modern Turkey: Religion, Politics, and Literature in a Secular State. London and New York, 1991. Some excellent articles on a variety of topics by a new generation of Turkish scholars.
Toprak, Binnaz. Islam and Political Development in Turkey. Leiden, 1981. Important book on religion and politics.
FEROZ AHMAD
