The arts and societies of the Kafirs of the Hindu Kush

A considered examination of the causes of the Arab Awakening and the likely appeal of Turkey. The next 5-10 years will be unstable and uncertain. But the previous regimes were in any case inherently unstable as autocratic leaders shut down almost all political life and thus slowly widened the constituency for Islam. As the Arabs forge theirb way forward, they will not look to the democracies of the West which in many cases supported the autocrats. They will look instead to regional models. It seems that Turkey is more attractive than the theocratic models of Saudi Arabia and Iran. Turkey is seen as a vibrant democracy and a dynamic economy. It is not just the Turkish model, but the success of the model which attracts.     

Nationalism and Islam in Cold War Turkey, 1944–69

Our current knowledge on the history of Turkish nationalism during the Cold War is a blend of facts and myths. One of those myths is the argument that the Turks developed a special relationship with Islam following their massive conversion in the eleventh century to the extent that religion has become the most important ingredient in Turkish national identity over time, even more pronounced than ethnic attributes. Secular visions of Turkish nationalism, on the other hand, which emphasize ethnic characteristics, are generally regarded as curious but unimportant exceptions. This article challenges that narrative and maintains that the alleged unimportance of secular nationalism is an invention of the late 1960s. It provides evidence that there was no consensus among Turkish nationalists on the question of Islam; on the contrary, the role of Islam in the making of Turkish identity was the most hotly debated topic among rival nationalist circles. It was not until the turning point in 1969 that a host of factors such as demographic change, anti-Kemalist and anti-RPP sentiments, and electoral behaviour in Cold War Turkey convinced Turkish nationalists to adopt a more Islamic-leaning discourse to be more successful at the ballot box.     

Understanding Turkish secularism in the 21th century: a contextual roadmap

ABSTRACT

This paper asserts that Turkish secularism and Islamism represent two faces of one coin – contemporary Turkish politics – when one considers their goals and strategies. The two ideological movements have shaped one another and each now seeks to impose itself as superior. This article unpacks these differences and similarities in the following steps: (a) it defines the socio-historic modes of Turkish secularism and (b) examines its social and political origins; (c) it then explores Islam’s return to the public domain as an oppositional Turkish identity; (d) and thereafter considers the diverse understandings of secularism resulting from neoliberal policies that relaxed state control over Islam, which then prompted socially-acceptable reinterpretations of Islam; and finally (e) describes how the AKP’s has re-imagined secularism while (mis)using Islam as a political instrument. The comparison highlights such commonalties as a collectivist character, a desire for state control as a vehicle to realize an ideology, intolerance of diversity and criminalization of other perspectives, and the differentiation of religion as morality in the private sphere versus its cultural role in the public sphere. It concludes that, under the AKP government, Islam is used as a tool to consolidate the power of Erdo?an’s kleptocratic regime.     

Cold war era relations between West Germany and Turkish political Islam: from an anti-communist alliance to a domestic security issue

ABSTRACT

West Germany played a significant role in the growth of Political Islam in Turkey during the Cold War. By recruiting from among Turkish workers in West Germany, Islamist organizations and the religious communities known as cemaats acquired significant economic revenues, which they used to fund their activities in Turkey. Moreover, West Germany served as a liaison between Turkish Islamists and Syrian and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members, who have influenced Political Islam in Turkey since the 1960s. Prominent Muslim Brotherhood representatives in West Germany took on important roles in the recruitment of Turks and also played some part in shaping the ideological development of Turkish Islamists. Due to the pervasiveness of anti-communism in West Germany and Turkey during the Cold War, the established orders in both countries viewed Political Islam as an antidote to the ascendancy of the Left. However, in the 1980s, Bonn and Ankara grew concerned about Islamist organizations becoming further radicalized and impossible to control; the two governments often cooperated in order to bring Political Islam under their own authority.     

The Prospects and Pitfalls of the Religious Nationalist Movement in Turkey: The Case of the Gülen Movement

This article examines the interplay of religion and nationalism in Turkey in the post-1990 period and discusses the prospects and pitfalls of religious nationalist movement by focusing on Gülen's Turkish Muslimhood. It is believed that the instrumental relationship between Islam and nationalism in Turkey as exemplified in the modernist religious nationalism of Gülen will help reveal that Islam has always been an indispensable element of the discourse of nationalism in Turkey and will force us to rethink the role or religion in Turkish society and politics.     

In the Service of Industrialization: Etatism,Social Services and the Construction of Industrial Labour Forces in Turkey (1930–50)

This article explains the employment practices at Turkish state factories during the 1930s and 1940s when the state expanded industrial activity. Complaints about the availability of industrial workers had been commonplace since the population exchange, but emerged as a key constraint on industrial activity in the 1930s and 1940s, as industrial production expanded considerably. The article argues that the Turkish state introduced social services in Turkish state factories in response to workers' resistance to the low wages and long hours of work. Rather than a deliberate attempt at populism or building political support, the expansion of social amenities through state economic enterprises reflected the weakness of the state in enforcing industrial discipline and the limitations of creating industrial labour forces through compulsion.     

From Islamic Radicalism to Islamic Capitalism: The Promises and Predicaments of Turkish-Islamic Entrepreneurship in a Capitalist System (The Case of İGİAD)

The rise of Turkish Islamic capitalism, and with it an Islamic bourgeoisie and the accompanying lifestyle has profound implications for the Muslim world, since the Turkish Muslims have been backed by a relatively successful democratic and liberal system that has allowed them to integrate more easily into the global system. Focusing mainly on the members of the Islamic-oriented Association of Economic Entrepreneurship and Business Ethics (?G?AD), the aim of this article is to demonstrate the inherent (in)compatibility and contradictions between Islam and capitalism in contemporary Turkey, and by extension in the Muslim world. From the start, for the Turkish Muslim bourgeoisie, the burning questions were ‘how to earn’ and, more importantly, ‘how to consume’ within a capitalist system while still not transgressing Islamic boundaries. In order to overcome these challenges, the article argues that, rather than creating an ‘alternative Islamic economic system’, Islamic actors have reduced – in some cases, even eliminated – this discursive and ideological tension between Islam and capitalism by (a) trying to introduce Islamic morality into capitalism and (b) redefining both Islam and capitalism. Through these mechanisms they have also broadened and deepened Turkish modernity.     

The Nation and its Sermons: Islam,Kemalism and the Presidency of Religious Affairs in Turkey

This article will attempt to develop an in-depth examination of the pivotal role of Islam in the articulation of Turkish nationalism and Turkish official identity by examining the sermons authorized and imposed by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (PRA), the state agency regulating religion, and how the their cosmologies of social, moral and political order are entwined. We will further argue that this role involves a twofold process; firstly, the Muslim identity was imagined as a prerequisite for being considered as a Turk and a Turkish citizen and, secondly, the ‘cultural intimacy’ of Turkish nationalism is grounded on the ‘root paradigms’ inherited and attained from the Islamic tradition and theology. These arguments are particularly pertinent at a time when Islamist JDP (Justice and Development Party) consolidated its power and began to instrumentalize PRA for its priorities and visions of Islam. This, however, does not bring a radical reshuffling of PRA. On the contrary, the continuity from the Kemalist-monitored PRA to the JDP-monitored PRA can be attested not only in its organizational features but also in its ideological make up; especially in terms of its perceptions of society, state and social order.     

Ethnocultural nationalism and Turkey’s non-Muslim minorities during the early republican period

This article analyses the Turkish nationalist elite’s economic and demographic Turkification policies toward the non-Muslim minorities in the 1920s and 1930s, and argues that the nationalist elite pursued ethnocultural nationalism toward the country’s non-Muslim citizens, while applying civic-territorial nationalism toward Muslim Turks. The article maintains that the nationalist elite, like the Young Turk regime, aimed at forming a national Turkish Muslim businessmen class at the expense of the non-Muslim minorities by pursuing economic and demographic Turkification policies.     

Islam,ethnicity and the state: contested spaces of legitimacy and power in the Kurdish-Turkish public sphere

ABSTRACT

The pro-Kurdish nationalist mobilization in Turkey was mostly built on the right to self-determination aligned with the Marxist-Leninist ideology for the insurgent Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the early 1980s and ethnic minority rights for the secular-leftist pro-Kurdish legal parties in the 1990s. The Turkish state mostly framed the legal and illegal pro-Kurdish mobilization as ‘the enemy of the state’ and ‘the enemy of Islam’ in its counter-insurgency efforts. However, in the 2000s, the PKK and the pro-Kurdish legal parties became more tolerant and inclusive toward Islamic Kurdish identity by mobilizing their sympathizers in events such as ‘Civic Friday Prayers’ and a ‘Democratic Islamic Congress’. This move aimed to function as an antidote to the rising popularity of the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Kurdish Hizbullah in the early 2000s. In other words, Islam and pious Muslim identity has increasingly become contested among Turkish Islamists, Kurdish Islamists, and the secular Kurdish nationalists. This article seeks to unpack why, how, and under what conditions such competing actors and mechanisms shape the discursive and power relationships in the Kurdish-Turkish public sphere.     

New Soviet books

By R. T. Akhramovich. Nauka Press. USSR Academy of Sciences. Moscow, 1966. Index. Pp. 191.

The other is The Arabs, Islam and the Arab Caliphate, by Ye. A. Belyayev, which is, alas, posthumously published.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this issue. Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East , by Martin Indyk. We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work , by Jimmy Carter. A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America's Relations with the Muslim World , by Emile Nakhleh. Egypt After Mubarak: Liberalism, Islam, and Democracy in the Arab World , by Bruce K. Rutherford. Faysal: Saudi Arabia's King for All Seasons , by Joseph A. Kéchichian. What Kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq , by Nadje al‐Ali and Nicola Pratt. Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People's Party, Secularism and Nationalism , by Sinan Ciddi. European and Turkish Voices in Favour and Against Turkish Accession to the European Union. Christiane Timmerman, Dirk Rochtus, and Sara Mels, eds.     

The ‘Forgotten’ People: Turkey's Artisans in the 1950s

This paper intends to shed light into a social class, the Turkish artisans who were ignored by the mainstream historiography for a variety of reasons. Yet, they were the ones who formed the bulk of the middle-class in the following decades, helped shape the contours of Turkish politics and were seen as responsible for propogating the ideology of conservatism. In fact, without a thorough analyses of this social class, one could hardly grasped the evolution of the so-called modernization process Turkey underwent for the last half a century or so. By using parliamentary records, periodicals, newspapers and memoirs of the time as well as artisans' own journals, we trace the social and ideological demands of the Turkish artisans of the 1950s and bring about a comparative perspective by using the historical experiences of other countries. We argue that their conservatism should not be confused with the modern day conservatism since they represented a version of a peculiar form of progressive ideas and demands together with pro-Western and pro-capitalist inspirations.     

Echoes of a Universalism Lost: Rival Representations of the Ottomans in Today's Turkey

Ottoman claims to universality – embodied in Ottoman imperialism, Ottoman Islam, and Ottoman cosmopolitanism – were undermined and ultimately shattered by the encounter with ascendant Europe. Following near-dismemberment after the First World War, Mustafa Kemal categorically rejected Ottoman universalism in favour of a non-irredentist, secularist nationalism. His brand of Turkish particularism shaped national identity and foreign policy for much of the twentieth century. Since the 1980s, however, a growing number of Turks have begun to revisit the Ottoman past. They are drawn to one or another of the three dimensions of Ottoman universalism which they use to make alternative national and foreign policy claims. This study provides a brief, schematic account of the later years of the Ottoman Empire and early years of the Turkish Republic in order to trace the metamorphosis of Ottoman universalism into Turkish particularism. It then explores how Kemalists, Islamists, liberals, and ultranationalists appropriate Ottoman universalism today in their attempts to redefine national identity and foreign policy.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
Sandcastles: The Arabs in Search of the Modern World , by Milton Viorst.
Trick or Treason: The October Surprise Mystery , by Robert Parry.
Islam in History: Ideas, People and Events in the Middle East (New Edition, Revised and Expanded), by Bernard Lewis.
Islam and the West , by Bernard Lewis.
Muquddinuz fiilm al-istighrab (An Introduction to "Occidentalism") , by Hasan Hanafi.
Battle Lines: The American Media and the Intifada , by Jim Lederman.
Turmoil: The Druzes, Lebanon and the Arab-Israeli Conflict , by Najib.
The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century , by Abraham Marcus.     

Talismans and figural representation in Islam: a cultural history of images and magic

Aniconism in Islam is one of the obvious presumptions of researchers in the history of Islamic arts. The main question addressed in this study is: What are the conceptions of people living in the earlier centuries of Islam regarding the issues of image and figural art? Or, in broader terms: What is the issue of animal or human representation in art which led to aniconism being enshrined in fiqh (religious jurisprudence)? Drawing upon primary sources, the study establishes that the Muslim mindset of image and figurative art in the early centuries of Islam—traced back to an old belief in the Persian, Egyptian and Ancient Palestinian civilizations—mainly pertained to the images which used to constitute the major elements of sorcery and talismans. Accordingly, aniconism did not proscribe images as aesthetic elements which also serve as the foundations of visual arts; rather, it was pitted against the practice of magicians and talisman makers. The genesis and perpetuation of aniconism in Islam are, therefore, associated with the cultural mentality of magic and talismans in step with the Quran’s explicit stance against polytheism and idolatry.     

“Unbounded Enthusiasm”:1 Australian Historians and the Outbreak of the Great War

There is a growing body of European scholarship revising the traditionally held view that the peoples of Europe greeted the war with boundless patriotic enthusiasm. Niall Ferguson, Jean-Jacques Becker and Jeffery Verhey in particular have argued that the “August Days” were more myth than reality. The outbreak of the war in Australia has not yet attracted similar attention. With few exceptions, Australian scholars writing about the opening days and weeks of the war have agreed that Australian popular reaction was dominated by overwhelming enthusiasm. This paper will explore the Australian historiography, since the 1930s, and assess the extent to which the “traditional” interpretation is in need of re-investigation.     

On the borders of the Turkish and Iranian nation-states: the story of Ferzende and Besra

Following the First World War, empires were replaced with nation-states for good and the map of the Middle East was redrawn. Traced back to the final decades of the nineteenth century, Kurdish nationalism did not result in a nation-state in the modern Middle East. Therefore, the Kurds inhabiting the borderlands of the four nation-states of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria came to be perceived as ‘trouble’ by these nation-states. Through the use of a wide array of published and unpublished Kurdish, Turkish, Persian and French archival documents, memoirs and oral and written literary pieces, this article unearths the role of a Kurdish tribal chief by the name of Ferzende in Mount Ararat Revolt in the late 1920s and early 1930s against the Turkish and Iranian nation-states. An exceptional contribution of this study is its exploration of the petition submitted to the Iranian Parliament by Ferzende's wife Besra. This study thus is a fresh contribution to the study of social history of the Middle East from the margins.     

Some Soviet works on Islam

N. A. Smirnov's Ochyerki istorii izucheniya Mama v SSSR (Essays on the study of Islam in the Soviet Union), Moscow, The Soviet Academy of Sciences’ Press, 1954; 276 pp.

Large Soviet Encyclopaedia (in Russian, 2nd edition, Moscow, 1953).

Soviet Historical Encyclopaedia (in Russian, Moscow, 1965).

1. E. A. Belyayev's Araby, Islam i Arabskiy Khalifat v rannyeye Sryednyevyekov'ye (The Arabs, Islam and the Arab Caliphate in the early Middle Ages), Moscow, Nauka Press, 1965; 280 pp.

2. I. M. Fil'shtinskiy and B. Ya. Shidfar's Ochyerk Arabo‐Musul'manskoy KuVtury (VII‐XII vv.) (An essay on Arabo‐Muslim culture from the seventh to the twelfth centuries), Moscow, Soviet Academy of Sciences – Nauka Press, 1971; 260 pp.

3. I. P. Pyetrushyevskiy's Islam v Iranye v VII‐XV vyekakh (Islam in Iran from the seventh to the fifteenth centuries), Leningrad University's Publishing House, 1966; 400 pp.

A. M. Vasil'yev, Puritanye Islama? Vahhabizmipyervoyegosudarstvo Sauditov v Arabii {Jlie Puritans of Islam ? Wahhabism and the first state of the Sa'uds in Arabia), Moscow, Nauka Press, 1967; 264 pp.

L. I. Klimovich's Islam (in Russian), 2nd enlarged edition, Soviet Academy of Sciences – Nauka Press, 1965; 335 pp.

R. R. Mavlyutov's Islam (in Russian), Moscow, The Political Literature Press, 1969; 160 pp.

D. A. Patrushyev's Islam i ego reyaktsionnaya sushchnos’ (Islam and its reactionary nature), Moscow, Znaniye Press, 1960; 32 pp.

M. V. Vagabov, it is named Islam i dzyenshchina (Islam and woman), Moscow, Mysl’ Press, 1968; 231 pp.

Kul't svyatykh v Islamye {Saint‐worship in Islam), by V. N. Basilov, Moscow, Mysl’ Press, 1970; 144 pp.

Nugman Ashirov's Evolyutsya Mama v SSSR (The evolution of Islam in the Soviet Union),’ Moscow, The Political Literature Press, 1972; 152 pp.     

An alternative reading of religion and authoritarianism: the new logic between religion and state in the AKP’s New Turkey

ABSTRACT

Since roughly 2011, the Turkish state and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been going through a process of mutual transformation. Some of the historical apprehensions, biases and frustrations exhibited by Turkey as a middle power have been absorbed by the relatively reformist AKP. Conversely, the AKP and its undisputed leader Erdo?an have seen their socio-political fears, power based conflicts and ethno-religious desires become dominant in all areas, including religion. As a consequence of this bilateral transformation, Turkey has become both an inclusionary and a hegemonic-authoritarian state, and at the same time a weak one. Within this new identity and structure of the state, Sunni Islam has become one of the regime’s key focal points, with a new logic. This article seeks to explain the transformation of the relations between the AKP’s Turkish state, religion and religious groups, by scrutinising Karrie Koesel’s logic of state-religion interaction in authoritarian regimes.