Politics and Islam in modern Turkey

Abstract

Until the founding of the Turkish Republic in October 1923, the principal component in the ideology of the former Ottoman regime was Islam under the Sultan-Caliph, who was both the temporal and the spiritual ruler. Mustafa Kemal Pasha, later Atatiirk, and his supporters decided to adopt secular nationalism as the ideology of the new state, hoping in time to relegate Islam to the sidelines. The aim in adopting secularism was to create a modern, rational state with institutions and laws which would facilitate the development of capitalism in Turkey. The Kemalists did not want any opponents to their grand design to use religion as barrier to the changes they envisaged. Thus, having learned the lesson of the second constitutional period (1908-18) they tried to remove Islam from political discourse, though not always successfully. Turkish society as yet undifferentiated in terms of classes and deprived of other means of expressing disaffection by the single-party regime, tended to use Islamic discourse to challenge the legitimacy of the state. The state responded by limiting the space in which this discourse took place by extending secular laws and becoming more and more militant against Islam. This was, in fact, the continuation of the contest for the state which began soon after Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876-1909) was forced to restore constitutional government in July 1908. The state retained its Islamic character, with Islam specified as its official faith and the Sultan-Caliph as its head. Nevertheless, after the election of the Chamber of Deputies in December 1908 and with the secret Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) exerting influence from behind the scene, the power of the sultan was no longer as absolute as it had been. Needless to say, Abdulhamid was not happy with his new role and would have liked to restore the status quo ante as he had done once before in 1878.