Excerpt from Neslihan Çevik & George M. Thomas (2012), Muslimism in Turkey and New Religious Orthodoxies, Ortadoğu Etütleri, Volume 3, No 2, pp.143-181.

The conservative Islamic regime in Saudi Arabia and the Islamist regimes and political forces in Iran and Afghanistan, in the aftermath of September 11, present a global image of Islam as a fundamentalist if not radically aggressive religion. This image fits nicely within International Relations (IR) theory that views deeply felt religious commitments within world politics as a serious problem and deeply felt Islam especially, given arguments that it is as an intrinsically “clashing civilization.” IR reinforces the popular question of why there has not developed a moderate Islam. This question takes on urgency in the face of democratic movements throughout Islam-majority countries in North Africa and the Middle East. What might be meant by moderate, however, is vague and alluded to primarily in the negative: moderate Islam (or moderate religion generally) is not violent, not repressive, not fundamentalist, and not theocratic.

Candidates for the label of moderate Islam are not uncommon and the most prominent one is the Islamic revival in Turkey. Yet, the ability to recognize a negatively defined case is difficult especially given normative concerns. If something is defined by the absence of an action, one can never categorize a case because it is always possible that the action will be committed sometime in the future. Islam in Turkey might sometime in the future become fundamentalist. This categorical blinder is reinforced by entrenched views that strongly held religions must be repressive: Islam in Turkey only seems moderate but it really is a front for a more aggressive Islamism. We argue that we need to rethink our understanding of religion, religion in modern democratic polities, and religion in the international.

We argue that the new Muslimist orthodoxy does not conform to conventional prescriptions. Neither liberal adaptation nor fundamentalist/Islamist rejection, it embraces many aspects of modern life while submitting that life to a sacred, moral order. Muslimism is a hybrid identity frame empowering engagements between Islam and secular modernity. More complex than cultural imports of fundamentalist religious movements and than what Roy has called ‘Sharia plus electricity’, Muslimists reinterpret theology (from sources such as hadith to symbols such as the veil) and restructure their everyday life by formulating new lifestyles, practices and institutions as they engage modernity. Within the frame of Muslimism, the main aim is not capturing the state to Islamize the society nor is it Islamizing the community to eventually bring on an Islamic state. The main concern is to contrive a lifestyle in which the ‘individual-believer’ can be incorporated into modernity without being marginalized and while preserving an Islam-proper living. Thus, Muslimism is neither state nor community-centered but individual-oriented.

We identify the roots of Muslimism in 1980s liberalizing policies. More than deregulating the market, liberalizing policies dramatically undermined statism (which promoted a total exclusion of religion from the public space) and opened up new political, cultural and economic spaces for religious mobilization. The retreat of statism also weakened Islamist establishments/expressions (developed as a reaction to statist policies) enabling religious actors to contest existing religious discourse and re-articulate religious identity. Moreover, liberalizing policies generated a new group of pragmatic Muslim entrepreneurs who wanted to take advantage of the new opportunities and be incorporated into modernity. Freed both from statist and Islamist prescriptions, these Muslim entrepreneurs became the prime agents of Muslimism.

Conditions undermining statism and traditional Islamic establishments existed prior to the neo-liberal transition in Turkey, yet in each case conditions for Muslimism were limited. Opportunity spaces were repressed by secularist backlashes and (or) mobilizing actors were confined to traditional religious sectors unable to articulate an alternative religious discourse. Moreover, the necessary conditions for the rise of Muslimism were hindered further by the external conditions enforcing both the statist and Islamist frames (e.g. the Cold War or 1979 Iranian revolution). In contrast, the necessary domestic conditions for Muslimism were coupled with a favoring IR context following the neo-liberal transition, giving Muslimism further support. The end of the Cold War, Turkey’s relations with the IMF, the US and NATO, lack of any serious external military threat, but in particular the increasing prospect of entering the EU further strengthened Muslimist positions undermining statist and Islamist ones.

New religious orthodoxies question the received binaries of IR theory: secular/religious, internal/external, culture/political, modern/traditional. They call for a more cultural and institutional approach to international relations and in particular to the place of religion.

A publication of the Center for European Studies, Middle East Technical University

Editors: Sait Akşit, Özgehan Şenyuva, Çiğdem Üstün

Contents

Sait Akşit, Çiğdem Üstün

Introduction: In Search of an EU-wide Debate on Turkey ………. 6

Nicolas Monceau

French Perceptions…………………………………………………………… 16

Katrin Böttger, Eva-Maria Maggi

German Perceptions …………………………………………………………. 32

Yvonne Nasshoven

Belgian Perceptions …………………………………………………………. 46

Emiliano Alessandri with Sebastiano Sali

Italian Perceptions……………………………………………………………. 58

Eduard Soler i Lecha & Irene García

Spanish Perceptions …………………………………………………………. 74

Athanasios C. Kotsiaros

Greek Perceptions ……………………………………………………………. 90

Gunilla Herolf

Swedish Perceptions ………………………………………………………. 104

Cengiz Günay

Austrian Perceptions ………………………………………………………. 118

Costas Melakopides

Greek Cypriot Perceptions………………………………………………. 132

Petr Kratochvíl, David Král, Dominika Dražilová

Czech Perceptions………………………………………………………….. 150

Adam Szymański

Polish Perceptions………………………………………………………….. 166

Iulia Serafimescu, Mihai Sebe

Romanian Perceptions ……………………………………………………. 186

Marin Lessenski

Bulgarian Perceptions …………………………………………………….. 204

Özgehan Şenyuva, Sait Akşit

Turkey Seen from the EU: Conclusions ……………………………. 218

Excerpt from the Introduction

We believe that there are serious, damaging myths and prejudices in Turkey about the EU, on the one hand, and in the EU member states about Turkey, on the other. One of the starting points of the project on Strengthening and Integrating Academic Networks (SInAN) was to question the myths and prejudices embedded in this ambiguous relationship. This edited volume is an attempt to outline how Turkey’s candidacy is perceived by different actors in a number of EU member states. While Turkish membership to the European Union, its opportunities and challenges for all parties are widely discussed, it is rather difficult to find comprehensive analysis that brings together the positions and arguments of different actors in different countries. In fact, at a very general level, it is argued that Turkey’s accession into the European Union is one of the most controversial and divisive topics deeply dividing both the EU governments and their citizens. Indeed, there is very limited literature on the European perceptions on Turkey’s membership into the EU, and almost none that tries to tackle all relevant stakeholders, such as the government, the opposition, the public and the elites, by exploring their views and examining the media coverage of those views within different countries…

Turkey Watch addresses one general question, which is the following: How has Turkey’s candidacy been perceived in EU member states between the years 2006 and 2009?

We asked different experts from the member states to take up the question, and to give qualitative insights by considering the perceptions of some of the main actors in their respective countries: the governments, the opposition parties, the civil society organisations and the media…

With the various country studies, we have tried to find answers to the following questions, through a consideration of the period between 2006 and 2009:

• • How strong is the debate on Turkey?
• • How informed is the debate on Turkey?
• • What forms the basis of the perceptions of the different actors?
• • Are there certain myths and prejudices that dominate the debate on Turkey in these countries?
• • What are the reasons and motives in support for or opposition to Turkey’s membership?
• • What are some of the perceived opportunities and challenges presented by Turkey’s membership?
• • Is there convergence of arguments in favour of or against Turkey on a cross-country basis?
• • Should perceptions on Turkey’s membership be considered within a broader context such as that of future of Europe?