Reorganization of Working Time and Modalities of Employment under the New Turkish Labour Act

Islamism and nationalism are usually regarded as opposites. The main purpose of this article is to question that notion. Instead of conceptualizing these two clusters of ideologies as standing in contradiction to each other, it may be worthwhile to look for affinities between them. That argument is based on an analysis of the doctrine of sovereignty as it underlies modern nationalism (congruence between the state and nation) and how this idiom shows signs of similarities to the theory of the classical caliphate (congruence between the ruler and ummah). When modern nationalism enters the political scene of the Muslim Middle East, Islamic heritage will constitute an important element of the way the nation, in relation to the state, will come to be articulated. The article starts by discussing developments in three countries where the relationship between Islamism and nationalism has been sufficiently evident (Egypt, Iran, and Turkey), and concludes with a discussion of the need for a theory of modernity, especially when tracing the historical roots of modern ideologies such as nationalism and Islamism.     

The 2014 Parliamentary Elections in India: A Study of the Voting Preferences of Muslims in Uttar Pradesh

This paper analyses the manner in which over the past few years, the major political parties in the largest Indian state of Uttar Pradesh have calibrated their policies with the objective of wooing Muslim voters. It examines the factors which shaped Muslim electoral behaviour in the general election of 2014 to the Lok Sabha (Lower House of the Indian Parliament) and how the electoral arithmetic was transformed in the run-up to this election. By analysing institutional, political and intra-community factors, it explores the reasons for the declining importance and representation of Muslims in the electoral arena of Uttar Pradesh.     

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.     

Süleyman Nazif's ‘Open Letter to Jesus’: An Anti-Christian Polemic in the Early Turkish Republic

The recent ‘cartoon crisis’ caused by European newspapers that published disrespectful caricatures of the prophet Muhammad and offended Muslims all over the world, intensified the discussions on ‘the clash of civilizations’. The present religious quarrels, as distressing as they are, remind us of the uproar Süleyman Nazif (1870–1927), a Muslim Turkish nationalist caused in Turkey in 1924. At that time the bone of contention was not a cartoon but the ‘Open Letter to Jesus’ Nazif published followed by his ‘The Reply of Jesus’ and in both of which he condemned the ‘crusader mentality’ of the Christian world. Being political satires, these letters reflect the views of Süleyman Nazif on the imperialist European powers, show his attempt to defend the newly founded Turkish Republic and illustrate how relations between Turkey and Europe had been deepening the prejudices of Muslims and Christians toward each other. This contribution presents translations of Nazif's two letters, preceded by an overview of Muslim–Christian polemics in the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic.     

Lost in Historiography: An Essay on the Reasons for the Absence of a History of Limited Government in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

This article tackles the question of why an attempt to uncover an indigenous history of limited government in the early modern Ottoman Empire has not been undertaken in twentieth-century Turkish historiography despite the obvious existence of several constituents for such a history, such as the political power and prestige of jurists (ulema), the political role of the janissary corps, and the many depositions and other revolts that they staged in cooperation with the jurists, which, in practice, limited the political authority of the sultan. The answer suggested by the article focuses on the political concerns of the early republic, the socio-economic concerns of the Muslim democrats currently in power, and the theoretical concerns of contemporary western historians who have been influenced by Edward Said's critique of Orientalism.     

德里苏丹国时期印度奴隶的地位及其身份演变

德里苏丹国时期印度奴隶因穆斯林政权的建立呈现出不同的特色.连年的战乱及伊斯兰教与印度本土宗教的冲突使奴隶的数量急剧增长,奴隶来源亦更加多元和广泛.这一时期印度奴隶的地位较历史上其他时期有所改善,奴隶的身份和地位呈现出朝向特权阶级的向上的"流动性".伊斯兰教所宣扬的平等思想和苏非圣人们的说教为这种"流动"提供了理论上的可能,以战争为主题的时代背景为这种"流动"提供了实践的机会,初来乍到的穆斯林统治者在印度次大陆立足未稳的客观现实,以及对当地宗教、文化及自然环境所表现出来的"水土不服"为这种"流动"提供了实现的可能.在穆斯林政权建立之后,一部分精英奴隶由于表现出色,被主人解除了奴隶身份,在政治地位上显现出明显的优越性,他们跻身统治阶级,成为封建贵族,极个别奴隶还成功问鼎权力的顶端.一部分奴隶为满足穆斯林宫廷需要,变身为手工业者或艺人,有力地推动了社会经济和文化的发展.不过这一时期绝大多数奴隶的地位并没有发生根本性的变化,他们虽然皈依了伊斯兰教,摆脱了印度社会的种姓压迫,实现了身份的转变,但依然生活在社会的最底层,依然是被压迫、被剥削的对象.     

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s transnational advocacy in Turkey: a new means of political participation

This study examines the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s transnational media advocacy as a shift in the Islamists’ political participation in general and the Brothers’ in particular. The article argues that the Brothers created their own TV channels in order to challenge the new regime’s legitimacy after 3 July 2013 by taking advantage of a sympathetic political environment in Turkey. Their media advocacy embraced a collective Islamic identity in its denunciation of the Sisi regime and called for a democratic restitution as a common Egyptian cause. Based on interviews conducted with TV presenters and a content analysis of the expatriates’ TV channels, this study presents transnational advocacy as a novelty in the Islamists’ repertoire of action.     

Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Haram al-Sharif: A Pan-Islamic or Palestinian Nationalist Cause?

The World Islamic Conference, held in Jerusalem in 1931 under the auspices of Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Supreme Muslim Council, marked a turning point in the Palestinian nationalist struggle as well as in the struggle between the two main factions—the more extremist one led by Hajj Amin and the more moderate Opposition—for control of the Palestinian leadership. The Conference, though co-sponsored by Shawkat ‘Ali and the Muslim Indian Congress, and ostensibly representative of the worldwide community of Muslims, was effectively dominated by Hajj Amin and his Palestinian supporters. Through his control of its proceedings, Hajj Amin was able to redefine the Palestinian nationalist cause as essentially a pan-Islamic one, in connection with the perceived need to defend the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem against Zionist encroachment. Contrasted here with the World Islamic Conference (and held concurrently with it) is the Second Arab Orthodox Congress. Whereas the World Islamic Conference sought to redefine an issue arguably specific to Palestine as pan-Islamic, the local Christian Orthodox community, in keeping with its desire to Arabise Palestine's Greek Orthodox Church (hence their self-designation as the Arab Orthodox Church in Palestine), sought to redefine what was essentially a religious matter—concerning the succession of the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem—in nationalist terms. It was not simply a matter of differing ideological perspectives; defining the cause of the Haram al-Sharif as a pan-Islamic one also served a political objective, namely the enhancement of Hajj Amin's position vis-à-vis his political rivals. Nonetheless, whatever the motivations involved, this development was a factor in the marginalisation of the Christian Arab component of the Palestinian nationalist movement. Whereas at the start of the British Mandate they had played a role disproportionately large relative to their actual numbers, by its end, their role in the nationalist movement had diminished almost to the point of near inconsequence, as evidenced, for instance, by their marginal involvement in the Arab Revolt (1936–1939).     

Youth and active citizenship in Turkey: engagement,participation and emancipation

This article critically discusses the establishment of active citizenship in Turkey with a specific focus on young people. In particular, we concentrate on the emergence of different strategies regarding civic and political participation in Turkey, by looking at their relationship with civic and political engagement. The scope is to focus on the influence that various factors have in determining patterns of participation. The research and relative results are based on the narratives inherent to two opposite scenarios – that we defined constraints to engagement and participation and patterns of emancipation – that emerged during the interviews with youth activists of NGOs in Turkey.     

A New Islamic Populism and the Contradictions of Development

A new form of Islamic populism has evolved in many parts of the Muslim world. Its emergence is part of the more universal phenomenon of populist responses to the contradictions of globalised capitalism. It is also a consequence of the outcomes of Cold War-era social conflicts and of social-structural transformations in Muslim societies over the last half-century. Specifically, it articulates the rising ambitions and growing frustrations of urban middle classes across the Muslim world, the anxieties of growing urban poor populations and relatively peripheralised sections of the bourgeoisie. Thus representing cross-class coalitions, the New Islamic Populism aims to provide access to power and tangible resources to an ummah conceived to be both downtrodden and homogeneous, though in actuality, increasingly differentiated. This is demonstrated through a discussion of Indonesia, Egypt and Turkey. The article is intended to provide an alternative to analyses that have tended to dominate discussions of Islamic politics over the last decade. These include analyses that emphasise radical ideas transmitted by shadowy transnational networks that threaten the global secular order and those that posit a strong relationship between political moderation and democratic practice but tend to overlook the structural underpinnings of Islamic politics.     

Non-Muslim citizens as foreigners within: how Ecnebi became Yabancı from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic

Since the establishment of the Republic in 1923, any non-Muslim born in Turkey, whatever his/her religion, is a Turkish citizen as are any of his/her Muslim fellows. However, sometimes he/she might consider him/herself an alien and might even be regarded as such by the official authorities. The purpose of this article is to shed light on this reality from an historical perspective. Based on the comparison of two terms (ecnebi and yabanc?, both meaning foreigner) that had become frequently used during the last Ottoman decades, the analysis establishes to what degree ecnebi was replaced by yabanc? in official republic terminology. The article argues that this change might be related to the formation of less visible categories of foreigners that partly originated from the confessional imperial framework based on the differentiation between Muslims and non-Muslims. Far from being set aside as the Kemalists have long claimed, this framework has prevailed. It partly explains to what extent, as a result, in the history of the Turkish Republic, non-Muslim Turkish citizens have sometimes been regarded as ‘foreigners within’ (içerdeki yabanc?).     

MEDIA,IDENTITY, AND STRUGGLE IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY CHINA

The experience of international migration is generally found to turn migrants into culturally hybrid communities. Yet, migrant communities often hold on to their religious moorings even as they relocate. From the 1970s onwards, the emerging leadership of Hindu settlers in Denmark consciously tried to transfer with them what they saw to be key aspects of Hinduism as they migrated to Denmark. In 1985, Hindus organized a major conference to position the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) as the umbrella organization for Hinduism in Denmark. Later on they established a Temple of Indians called Bharatiya Mandir to provide a place of worship for local Hindus. The philosophy behind the temple conformed to the nondenominational Hindu nationalist vision of Hindus as a unified community. This article, which contrasts the aim of Hindu nationalism with the on-the-ground realities of Hindu mobilization in Denmark, reveals that two major factions spearheaded Hindu nationalist endeavors in Denmark from the 1980s until 2006. The two factions successfully launched several projects, and even collaborated in their execution, but the initiatives were beset with rivalries that hampered the communal unity they had set out to achieve. The authors analyze this factional rivalry as an expression of Indian political culture, arguing that tensions among Hindu activists in Denmark is an instance of the political factionalism prevalent in the Indian subcontinent. The unintended emergence of such factionalism represents the successful transfer of a core element of Indian political culture to a new locale through Hindu nationalist politics. The authors base their argument on field observations since the 1980s, recent interviews with key religious players, and more than two hundred pages of written materials that offer a rare entry point to the study of Hindu nationalism ex situ.     

Sudhir Kakar and the Socio‐Psychological Explanation of Hindu‐Muslim Communal Riots in India

Concentrated principally in four of twenty‐eight Indian states, there have been more than 33,000 Hindu‐Muslim riots since 1947. Scholars have differently explained communal violence. Some have argued that there are innate qualities in Indian society which encourage what Donald Horowitz calls “deadly ethnic riot”. Psychoanalysts have wondered if proneness to violence is ingrained in India's religion‐based culture. After assessing several existing explanatory paradigms, I examine the legitimacy of psychoanalysis and some selected aspects of other explanations, arguing that both the rational and psychological theories help explain Hindu‐Muslim conflict. I submit that Sudhir Kakar, who worked with Erik Erikson at Harvard and trained at the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt, unduly follows the elitist French social psychologist, Gustave Le Bon (1895), to present violent communities as undifferentiated masses. Specifically, Kakar's contention that Hindu males are psychologically socialized by confrontational religious values deserves close scrutiny. Methodologically, drawing on the postmodern thesis of the de‐centered subject and minimizing the significance of the master narrative, I conclude that primordial ancient hatred is not programmed in India, arguing that Kakar's insights do not speak to religion's truth, but do help us understand its manifestation and political psychology.     

Questioning the ‘immortal state’: the Gezi protests and the short-lived human security moment in Turkey

This article has three interrelated objectives: firstly, it challenges monolithic depictions of the 2013 Gezi protests and conceptualizes the so-called ‘Spirit of Gezi’ as a highly influential—albeit temporary—power in the politics of Turkey. Secondly, it traces the success of the HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) in the 7 June 2015 parliamentary election back to Gezi while acknowledging the roots of the party within the Kurdish political movement. Thirdly, it examines the manifestation and subsequent decline of what is termed the human security moment in Turkey. The arguments of the work are mostly based on interviews with Gezi activists. It is argued that Gezi produced a discursive challenge to the national security-oriented understanding of the ‘Kurdish question’. Yet, even though the human security-oriented Gezi discourse had brought the Kurdish political movement and the Turkish left together, it ultimately failed to permanently transform Turkish politics due to the collapse of the peace process in June 2015. In addition to contributing to the literature on Gezi, the article also draws insights for security studies. It concludes that alternative discourses to the state-centric securitization approach to conflicts such as the Kurdish question can only have a lasting effect under conditions of ceasefire.     

Opposition to Israel’s first Qadiya

ABSTRACT

In 2017, following a fraught 22-year struggle, Israel appointed the first female judge (sing. qadiya, pl. qadiyat) to its Islamic (shari’a) courts. This contrasts with the earlier appointments of qadiyat around the world, most notably in the Palestinian Authority in 2009. The Israeli shari’a courts’ jurisdiction over family law, a field of law which engages in women’s issues, makes the introduction of qadiyat particularly salient. This article is among the first to focus academic research on the issue of qadiyat within Israel and is based on field interviews with practitioners and academic experts, as well as documentary primary and secondary sources. This article finds that the obstacles that delayed the appointment of Israel’s first qadiya were a manifestation of the political impact Muslim minority status had on the country’s Muslim and Jewish establishments.     

De-Europeanisation through Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis of AKP’s Election Speeches

Abstract

This article takes issue with the question of whether Turkey has been turning away from Europe in recent years, by adopting a critical constructivist lens to understand how, rather than why, Turkey’s presumed distance from the European Union (EU) is taking place. In doing that, it seeks to analyse the ways in which the political–societal transformation of the country as distanced from the EU is enabled by certain discursive practices which in turn contribute to the growing rift between Turkey and the EU. This is mainly conducted through a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of texts produced by former Prime Minister and now President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an on Europe and the EU during key election periods starting with the 12 June 2011 general election.     

Party dualities: Where does political Islam go now?

One of the unusual features of the recent emergence of moderate Sunni Islamist political parties onto the formal political scene in the Arab world as a result of the Arab Awakening is that they nearly always emerge as elements in political dualities. Thus the party – a political movement – is wedded to a social movement and, sometimes, to a trade union as well. In addition, the social movement usually predates its parallel political movement. Furthermore, this structural duality seems to be confined to the Sunni world and often seems to be associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The question then is precisely why this dual structure has been generalized within the political arena now colonized by moderate Sunni political Islam; is it a consequence of formal legal constraints upon such movements or does it respond to their internal dynamics? A further question raises the issue of why these dualities are not replicated within the Shi’a context or amongst secular political movements. And, finally, have they been paralleled amongst political movements arising from different religious traditions and what are the likely outcomes?     

Indigenismo and the Avant‐garde: Jorge Sanjinés' Early Films and the National Project

Jorge Sanjinés' 1960s films Revolución and Ukamau challenge the class and ethnic hierarchies of Bolivian society by casting the proletarian and indigenous masses as revolutionary liberators. The new national imaginary they evoke is tightly bound to the experimental cinematic techniques they employ, since their rejection of rationalist, realist aesthetics signals a partial undermining of the linear time of the modern nation. Ukamau both recalls and resists previous Bolivian indigenismo, which sought to co‐opt the Indian into a national mestizo consciousness. Its exoticist portrayal of the Indian ultimately limits its political effectiveness, but textual and contextual analyses show subversive Indian agency leaking through.     

An introduction to the articles on Indonesia

Abstract

In May 1987, general elections will be held in Indonesia. These will be the fifth such elections since the country's independence in 1945, and the contesting parties will be the government electoral organization, GOLKAR, which convincingly won the last elections, the largely Muslim PPP (Unity Development party), and the small Christian and nationalist PDI (Indonesian Democratic party). After the previous elections in 1982, the Indonesian government made the claim that the proceedings had been “direct, general, free and secret,” and indeed it was difficult to find more than incidental evidence of fraud or manipulation in the conduct of the poll itself. However, this attempt by “Pancasila Democracy” to claim kinship with the Western democratic tradition studiously ignored the context of political restriction which has operated in Indonesia for the last three decades. Since such claims are likely to be revised after the coming elections to suggest that the power of the New Order government of President Suharto rests on the active consent of the people, the editors of the Bulletin have thought it appropriate to devote this issue to a closer examination of the recent political history of Indonesia.     

Civil and civic death in the new authoritarianisms: punishment of dissidents through juridical destruction,ethical ruin,and necropolitics in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Since the Turkish government’s recent turn to authoritarianism, tens of thousands of public dissidents and government critics have been subjected to dismissals and revocation of civic rights via emergency decrees. The victims call this process ‘civil death’. We aim to understand the logic behind this form of punishment in Turkey by examining the differential genealogy of civil death in the work of Hannah Arendt, Bertrand Ogilvie, Giorgio Agamben, and Achille Mbembe. We demonstrate that a later form of civil death was used by totalitarian regimes in a process leading to the reduction of targeted individuals as ‘superfluous’ and as ‘living corpses’ in concentration camps. In these contexts, death became an instrument of biopolitical and necropolitical powers. We propose that although contemporary punishment of public dissidents in Turkey shares some similarities with these forms of civil death, it may more fittingly be identified as civic death. We argue that while civil death is based on the classical political right of the sovereign to ‘make die’ after first reducing targeted individuals to little more than living corpses, civic death is linked to the power of the sovereign to ‘let die’ through the exclusion of public dissidents from economic, social, and political life.