Abstract
Within the framework of Islam and politics, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP), the ruling party in Turkey for the last 10 years, has been at the centre of several vigorous discussions and studies within international academic circles. These discussions most often focus on the extent to which the AKP has successfully (or not) achieved a restructuring of Islam and politics in contemporary Turkey. They suggest important clues about the shifting framework of democracy and neoliberalism in Turkey, whether relations between Islam, the state and society are indeed changing in Turkey, and how the relationship is evolving between democratic politics and pious Muslims, who have been in power in Turkey for almost 10 years.
Yıldız Atasoy’s 2009 Islam’s Marriage with Neo-liberalism: State Transformation in Turkey offers vital clues about the roles played by Islamism, neoliberalism and secularism in the historical transformation of state–society relations in Turkey. Atasoy uses the work of thinkers such as Polanyi, Somers, Block and Žižek to investigate the transformation of state and society in Turkey. Atasoy’s central conclusion is that a combination of internal and external factors throughout the history of the Turkish Republic and late Ottoman periods, coupled with the ideas and practices of religious AKP leaders and other Islamic groups, has resulted in a ‘marriage’ between Islam and neoliberalism in Turkey.
Atasoy first offers comments and observations on the historical and fundamental roles played by Islam, secularism and liberalism in shaping Turkish politics. To be able to understand the current system in Turkey, Atasoy argues, one must examine modernization efforts and the transition to a market economy in the 19th century Ottoman Empire, and the periods of etatism and secularism in the 20th century. Also, neoliberal economic policies followed in the 1980s, and the influence of the European Union, the IMF and the World Bank at the beginning of the 21st century played important roles in shaping the current situation. Atasoy also investigates important restructuring moments of the Turkish state within the last century that have led to this ‘marriage’ between Islam and neoliberalism.
The eight chapters around which Atasoy’s book is organized provide both a comprehensive theoretical background and historical narrative to her argument. In Chapter 2, ‘The allure of the West’, Atasoy traces the development of the increasingly tense relationship between Kemalist and Islamic ideational stances from the final years of the Ottoman Empire onwards, and provides a rich commentary on the interwoven connections between the two. The chapter focuses on state bureaucracy, and provides an account of the tangled relationships between Islam, liberalism, market capitalism and secularism as instruments of social control. In Chapter 3, ‘Turkish Islam: Unthinking Kemalism’, Atasoy discusses the many restructuring efforts since 1923, the year the Turkish Republic was proclaimed, and focuses on whether liberal economic policies followed in the 1980s mutated the Kemalist modernization project. In this period, state bureaucracy retained its direct and indirect ideological control on the political and social dynamics of neoliberalism.
Chapter 4, ‘Reconstituting the state: The Islamic framing of neo-liberalism’, narrates the story of how religious groups blended their ideas and discourses with neoliberalism as they participated in a market economy, examining the cases of Musiad, AKP, Nurcu and Naqshbandi groups. The chapter argues that neoliberalism framed by an Islamic discourse had a dual character. On the one hand, this form of neoliberalism reflects privileged western values, and on the other, it underlines the Islamic goals of creating virtuous individuals and a good society.
Chapter 5, ‘Kemalist state feminism and Islamic dress code’, examines how the cultural and political aspects of Islamic dress code for women has been shaped and reshaped since the last period of the Ottoman Empire. As part of the process of the creation of a nation-state in the 1930s, educated urban women were given a privileged position in the Kemalist cultural hierarchy. Also known as Ataturkists, these women were expected to play an important role in the cultural transformation towards secularism within the framework of bureaucratic state feminism. On the other hand, ordinary Anatolian women who wore Islamic dress were seen as culturally unfit for the modernization project of the state bureaucrats. This chapter also provides an analysis of how Islamic appearance slowly disappeared from the public sphere in the 1930s, and how Kemalist modernity was created via women’s dress. Chapter 6, ‘Politics without guarantees: The headscarf bans’, focuses on the Islamic ‘transformative resistance’ against Kemalist state practices regarding the headscarf bans in place since the 1980s. Islamic transformative resistance shaped the future as it restructured politics and pedagogy. Some Islamic groups expressed their concerns with reference to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the standards of the European Union, using a discourse of liberal democracy. According to Atasoy, the search for universalization and a comprehensive democracy among Islamic groups, though uncertain, may help in the creation of a more democratic future in close cooperation with global solidarity movements. Chapter 7, ‘Headscarf madness: Narratives of religious rights’, examines existential resentment among women with headscarves against Kemalist state practices. The chapter demonstrates how political projects and private experiences shape one another in the creation of an Islamic perspective. The chapter also examines views of men and women on the headscarf bans in Turkey, and analyses how these bans became a part of the process of the creation of a new political, cultural and emotional environment. In this new environment, the issue of the headscarf is framed by democratic discourse. Chapter 8, ‘Conclusion’, summarizes the main points of each chapter, makes an overall evaluation, and presents the sovereignty practices of the state under the new conditions of neoliberal restructuring.
Overall, the book makes an important contribution to the literature with its conceptual and narrative aspects and with the rich details it provides. Atasoy’s comments on Islam, the state and the nature of politics in Turkey provide a fresh perspective and can serve as an important source for everyone working on issues in contemporary Turkey.