The rise of
Islamic fundamentalism
THE RISE of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East is
TURKEY this movement experienced its biggest boom since the establishment of the re public under the military dictatorship and the transitional regime that has fol During this entire period, the Islamic adres not only gained influence withi he state apparatus but they also ac one the political questions most commented on by observers of the region today. But it has been generally assumed that Turkey, with its secularist and Westernizing tradition — and because it is by far the most developed of the Muslim countries — was immune to this phenomenon.
This article analyzes signs of growing Islamic activity in
Turkey and what this means for the national democratic revolution carried out in the country 60 years ago.
FUAT ORCUN
IN JANUARY the Islamic fundamental.
ist movement gave a demonstratior of strength in Turkey, taking as a pretext a decision by the High Council of
Education (CSE) that banned female stu-
"turban," the dents from wearing the modern version of the chador. This is used by fundamentalist female students to cover their heads and get around the previous rules laid down by the CSE.
These also banned moustaches and
"ideological" beards for men and lownecked dresses for women.' The fundamentalist actions have continued cently, notably with an occupation of the ground floor of the ruling party's building in the Turkish capital by students in the theological faculty of the
University of Ankara.
A whole series of protest actions were organized by groups of fundamentalist students. This movement, which began in the universities, subsequently spread to other social layers. Erbakan, the chair of the
National Salvation Party (MSP — Milli
Selamet Partisi, a moderate Islamic party banned after the 1980 coup d'etat), participated in a banned demonstration in Istanbul on January 18 that included
4,000 people, where slogans were
"You can't ban the charaised such as dor," "Muslim Turkey," "We want the
A second demonstration of 4,000 took place the following day in Konya, in central Anatolia, a traditional bastion of the fundamentalists. On January
21, there was another smaller demonstration in the Anatolian city, reportedly of about 700 people. In a number of towns, Islamic students occupied the post offices to send telegrams of protest to the government.
These protests have given impetus to discussions about the political power of Islam in Turkey. Premier Turgut Ozal, who was a candidate on Erbakan's slates in 1977 but was not elected, has said that the threat of Islamic fundamentalism should not be exaggerated in Turkey, since it represented only a "potential" danger.
Expulsions from military schools
On the other hand, President Kenan Evren said that there was a grave danger. According to Evren, the fundamentalists even tried to infiltrate the army, nearly a thousand students are said to have been expelled from military schools for fundamentalist activism.
However, it was Evren himself who made courses in religion obligatory in the primary thereby seriously breaching the tradition of secular education left by Mustafa Kemala. Evren has also systematically used "Koranic" vocabulary in his speeches to mass audiences in order to get their support for his projects.
The potential Islamic vote in Turkey is about 8 to 10 per cent. The ruling Party of the Motherland (ANAP) has an Islamic wing. Moreover, the Welfare Party (RP), which took the place of Erbakan's party, got 4.76 per cent of the vote in the 1984 municipal elections, and 5.6 per cent of the vote in the September 1986 partial elections. Finally, besides the moderate Islamic currents organized in political parties, there are more radical currents that refuse to organize in the classical party form. Both currents toquired a certain prestige. They were substituted for the cadres of the political movements blacklisted by the regime. For the first time, a government claiming to be Kemalist tried to take Islam was carried out at the same time that the leadership of the MSP were being tried by this regime.
The military have not supported Islar. as an activist ideology but as one of the factors that could promote the depoliticization of society. The result has been quite different. Instead of becoming a conciliationist ideology under the control of the state, Islam has gained a stronger political and ideological identity of its own, and today its influence in daily life is much stronger than its weight at the polls.
Since the Ottoman empire, the process of secularization in Turkey has developed differently than in the other Muslim countries. It was in this area that the republican ideology took its most radical forms. Islam, "oppositional" ideology could not-be expressed openly for a whole period. Its adherents confined themselves to supporting the parties that opposed the founding party of the modern Turkish state, the Republican People's Party (CHP). And by operating in this way, they were able to play a real role in the opposition movement.
For decades, the political cleavages did not correspond clearly to class differences, and the the conflicts between "secularists" and "religious," between "progressives" and "reactionaries," or
"Kemalists" Kemalists" were accepted as the keys 1. Far left students were said to be distinguished by wearing a beard and floppy moustaches, while far right students were supposed to wear short moustaches. One of the first acts of the dictatorship at the time of the coup d'etat was to ban such facial displays of ideological identification. 2. The sharia is the religious law comprising the whole of the obligations that derive from the Koran and the 1
Sunna (the tradition of the prophet's teachings). It embraces all aspects of the individual and collective life of Muslims. 3. In Turkey, the term "reactionary" includes all relig- ious currents, as well as all "conservative" currents in 3 general, since in official terminology there are only progressives (Kemalists) and "reactionaries" (everybody else). May 18, 1987 • International Viewpoint
TURKEY for understanding and analyzing the society.?
Over the last 20 years, class antagonisms have asserted themselves and have forced a clarification of the political cleavages.
After a topsy-turvy phase, Islam has more choices about its role in society than it did before the coup d'etat of 1980.
The rise of Islamic cadres in the state
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
In 1919, at the end of the First World
War, the victorious allied powers occupied a dismantled Ottoman empire.
English, French, Italian and Greek forces took up positions in Turkey. Gradually they encountered opposition from a
38 year-old Turkish general, Mustafa
Kemal. He reflected a twofold reaction, firstly the need to expel the invaders and secondly to build a secular and progressive republic on the ruins of the Ottoman empire. From 1919 to 1923, he involved himself in military resistance and later in political action. In 1920, he established relations of solidarity with the Bolsheviks, while clashes were developing between the Turkish army and the occupying troops.
On October 29, 1923, the Turkish republic was proclaimed. Mustafa Kemal became its president. The Kemalist revolution, a bourgeois revolution, was clearly modernist. It took over from the
Turkey of the sultans and Islamic dominance. It was the fruit of four years of political-military struggle against the great powers of Europe.
Kemal died on November 10, 1937, after directing a vigorous and forceful modernization of the country - abolition of the califate [monarchy], unification of the educational system, elimination of religious ministers, new penal and civil codes, as well as economic reforms. In 1927, a law was adopted to stimulate industry, and in 1934, the first five-year plan was drawn up.
In April 1930, a law was passed giving young people the right to vote and to be elected in municipal elections.
The fight for secularism and literacy continued. The regime ran up against
But other problems emerged. Intensive "Turkification," tight control in the name of "national unity" leading to the
Kurdish insurrection in February 1925, and repression against the communists, began in the same year.
Kemalism was codified in the form of six fundamental principles of the bourgois revolution - republicanism, secularism, progressiveness, populism, statism and nationalism - represented symbolically by six arrows on the party emblem.
It is this Kemalist heritage that the various factions of the Turkish bourgeoisie claim to embody today. * International Viewpoint • May 18, 1987 apparatus has opened up possibilities unhoped for before. Another significant phenomenon in the education of the new generations is an exceptional rise in the number of students of the religious schools.
In fact, we are seeing a deliberate and systematic attempt by the political power to gain a social base and cadres that will perpetuate a conservative ideology to overcome the historic and artificial cleavage between the secularists and religious. The objective is to achieve a social peace based on social integration, starting with the youth. And the cement of this is to be religion. The coup d'etat accelerated this process, which was set in motion before 1980.
The phenomenon of political Islam, whose internal differentiation should not be underestimated, deserves study. The whole question is whether Islam — including both its moderate and radical wings - is opposed to the bases of capitalism or to the rights and democratic gains of the workers in this system, an openly reactionary movement opposed to socialist democracy.
In the 1960s, the left press in Turkey made an amalgam between the right, reactionary and the religious currents. While the fascist currents had not yet manifested themselves at that time, the left tended to see the hand of the United States behind every expression of this militant Islam. The latter organized in "circles for fighting communism," having its own legal and clandestine organ-
In 1969, for the first time, this activist force arrayed itself against the left and asserted its own political identity at the time of the anti-American demonstrations against the visit of the Sixth Fleet to Istanbul. It has to be remembered that the attitude of the left toward this current, which was grouped essentially in the ruling Justice Party (AD — Adalet Partisi) of Demirel was not one of class independence.
Failure to take a class position
The left placed itself in the framework of Kemalism, and could not rise above the ideological cleavages existing within the bourgeoisie. It confined itself to attacking Islam with Kemalist concepts and terminology, failing to base itself on a class position.
It was only on the eve of the 1971 coup d'etat that Islam formed an independent political party, with the founding of the National Order Party (MNP - Milli Nizmet Partisi) of Erbakan.
So, the appearance of Islam on political scene in its own right goes back to a conflict between the government and the commercial bourgeoisie of
### SAVA
The slogan says "Struggle for Islam" (DR) Anatolia.
The revival of Islam dates from the 1940s, when the country was ruled by the secular Kemalist party, the CHP. At the end of its reign, the CHP wanted to widen its popular support by opening up to the Islamic layer and relaxing the secularist pressure. But it was its rival, the Democratic Party (DP), the ancestor of Demirel's Justice Party, that was to profit from this opening.
### Independent political identity for Islam
Over the ten years that the DP ruled the country, from the 1950 elections until the 1960 coup d'etat, the "secularist vise" was to continue to loosen. But, contrary to a belief that is widespread within the Turkish left, the Democratic Party remained fundamentally "secular."
At the end of the 1960s, when industrialization, urbanization, and the development of capitalism reached a high point, Islam gained an independent political identity. While it had been thought that it would disappear as Turkey modernized, it manifested itself more powerfully than before.
It is wrong to think that the growth capitalism sufficient to "modernize" the people and secularize it. Quite to the contrary, Islam has grown parallel to capitalism, and what is more is speaking a language of opposition to capitalism, which Islamics termed an "invention of the foreign-
The MNP was dissolved by the regime that came out of the 1971 coup. But in 1972, the Islamic movement returned to the political scene with the founding of
IN
the MSP by the same Erbakan. The unexpected success of this party in the 1973 elections - 11.8 per cent of the poll and 1,265,771 votes - and its rise to power in a coalition government with Ecevit's CHP aroused major discussions in the left.
What social strata did this party represent? What was the place and function of Islam in Turkish society? The analyses shifted with the alliances made by the MSP. The MSP tilted "to the left" when it came closer to the CHP, and "to the right" when it moved away. Finally, the facts settled this discussion.
When the MSP took a place in the nationalist front coalition with the AP and the Nationalist Action Movement (MHP), the fascist Grey Wolves' organization, it became clear to the left that it was a right-wing party. The 1977 elections provided more evidence about the party's social base. It was very similar to the MHP's, and in some in the country even had an "ethnic" character, owing to its links [tarikatlar — the Sufi religious orders] and traditionalist social relations.
It was, moreover, by basing itself on such relations, which might be called tribal, that the MSP mainly gained a social base in Kurdistan and thereby compensated for some of its electoral losses in the western regions of the country. To a large extent, it took on the task of dampening and combating the national consciousness of the Kurd-
On the other hand, the resemblance of their social bases and their resulting rivalry led the MHP and the MSP into conflict. This struggle sometimes took the form of physical confrontations, in which the Islamics often came out on
After the 1980 coup d'etat, many people in Turkey expected a severe repression against the Islamic party and its activists. On the eve of the coup, a big demonstration in Konya, the Islamics' main bastion, had been described by the junta as a quasi-insurrectional action by the "obscurantist" forces, and had been one of the main pretexts given for the coup d'etat, especially for the West.
The reality was to be quite different. Unlike their traditional Kemalist predecessors, the putschist generals headed by Evren no longer considered Islam as an "obscurantist" element but as a factor of social integration. They wanted to use it to legitimize their regime among the people, to compensate for the depoliticization, and in order to control an element that they could not afford to ignore.
The state cannot want, and could not afford, to let radical and activist Islamic no conciliation was possible with such groups. But paradoxically, these attempts to absorb it into the state gave a new legitimacy to moderate Islam and a new momentum to militant Islam, which had no intention of letting itself be pulled into the lap of the official
Return to a Koranic
Far from undermining the base of radical Islam, this ideological readjustment only strengthened it by allowing it to work openly and legally. Radical Islam society, "Westernization." It has another project, return to a Koranic state. these two antagonistic projects must, sooner or later, clash. On another level, it seems that we are no longer seeing the traditional frictions between Kemalists and moderate Islam.
What lesson should be drawn from this surge of militant Islam?
First of all, it refutes the thesis that religion will decline parallel to the development of industry and culture. The Islamic movement has gained a place in Turkish society, and it is by no means prepared to give it up so quickly.
Secondly, the now established presence of this element obliges us to make a serious study of Turkish society, of its moral values, of the different ideological currents running through it and of the specific forms assumed by the class struggle.
The project of eradicating religion by force has failed, even if Kemalism achieved some partial successes.
Sixty years ago, the regime of Mustaf Kemal banned the brotherhoods and other Islamic organizations. Today, in
TURKEY view of the revival of Islam, we can say that he totally failed. Islam has to a large extent taken its own back from the secularists who reduced it to silence by police methods.
In taking that course, Kemalism betrayed the fellow traveller with whose help it won the national struggle in the 1920s and which helped it to found the republic. But it was not able to impose itself on the society as a whole, and ended by betraying itself, owing to its inability to cope with the new, real social struggles. The secularist ideology is not indispensable for the maintenance of bourgeois society.
Collaboration with imperialism when necessary
Regardless of the extent of the repression and the efforts made to keep it from becoming institutionalized, Islam managed to maintain itself in an organized form apart from the state.
What is more, the restriction of democratic freedoms under Kemalism prompted a section of the religious masses to embrace an ideology that they believed to be liberating, when it was just as undemocratic.
The fact is that the Islamic political is fundamentally democratic and anti-pluralist. Its anticapitalist or anti-imperialist phraseoloanti-Westernism, which does not prevent it from collaborating with imperialism when need be. The example of the financing of the Nicaraguan contras by the product of the arms sales to Iran is a striking proef of
The fight for democracy and socialism therefore involves a confrontation with the Islamic current. Socialists have no need either for "Turkish style" secularism or radical Islam. But they cannot ignore the phenomenon of Islam in a 99 per cent Muslim society. It is inevitable that the Islamics will be present in the mass movement, as the existence of an Islamic union confederation (HakIs) - although a relatively small one
We cannot ask the Muslim workers to give up their religious beliefs as a condition for participating in the class struggle. Such an attitude would be putting obstacles in the way of the necessary class unity. The fight for democratic rights in Turkey involves a struggle against the state, among other things, for freedom of religion, as well as a struggle against militant Islam, which is an anti-working class and reactionary current.
4. The MSP got 8.6%, or 1,269,918 votes. The MHP 5
got 6.4%, or 951,544 votes, while in 1973, it got only 3.4%. The MHP gained in those regions where the MSP May 18, 1987 • International Viewpoint
TURKEY