Kurdish Nationalism and Political Islam in Turkey by Taspinar Ömer;

Author:Taspinar, Ömer;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Accordingly, the Kemalist state’s religious apparatus was supposed to disseminate ‘positivist’ Islam. Article 136 of the 1982 Constitution turned the Presidency of Religious Affairs into a constitutional institution. This article set the goal of the PR A as the “promotion and consolidation of national solidarity and unity.” Article 24 of the Constitution also required the state to carry out religious and ethical education within the context of “national solidarity and unity.”75 To the charges of anti-secularism concerning the teaching of religion in high schools, the military courts responded by arguing that “the Basic Law of Education encourages the teaching of love of God and the Prophet as a way of cultivating moral aspects of students that would lead to the love of their fatherland, state, and family.”76 The impetus to use Islam in order to consolidate the nationalist foundations of the Republic went as far as to rewrite secondary level schoolbooks following the Turkish-Islamic slogan: “The best Turk is a Muslim Turk—the best Muslim is a Turkish Muslim.”77

Therefore, the first half of the 1980s marked a new stage in the interplay between state and religion in the framework of a relative ‘Islamization of secularism.’78 In that sense, the Turkish-Islamic synthesis’ attempted to integrate secularism, Turkish nationalism and Islam. This ideology was already very popular in the early 1970s among a group of conservative intellectuals involved in the Aydinlar Ocagi (The Heart of the Enlightened).79 MustafaErkal, the secretary of the organization, argued that “the love of the fatherland is the love of faith Those who reject the idea of homeland and a national flag cannot grasp the meaning of Islam as well.”80 The Heart’s ideology, aimed at overriding particularistic interests by stressing the danger of anarchy and social divisions, helped shape the authoritarian-solidaristic spirit of the 1982 Constitution.81 As a result, in the early 1980s, the military perceived the ‘Turkish-Islamic synthesis’ as a harmless alternative to militant Kemalist secularism, which had never resonated with Anatolian masses. As Richard Tapper points out, “This synthesis was aimed at an authoritarian but not Islamist state where religion was seen as the essence of culture and social control, and should thus be fostered in the education system without politicization.82

De-politicization had top priority on the military’s agenda. As previously mentioned, the 1982 Constitution prohibited any connection between trade unions, professional associations, interest groups and political parties. Since the pre—1980 political violence was often centered on university campuses, the coup created the Higher Educational Council, which had the goal of purging left-leaning professors and centralizing the curriculum and research agendas. The Higher Education Law No. 2547, enacted in late 1981, therefore banned the affiliation of the faculty and students with any political party.83 As a result of this law, most leftist scholars either resigned, or were purged, and replaced by conservative ones who accepted to work in the absence of academic autonomy. In an effort to strengthen the executive body, the 1982 Constitution also significantly increased the power of the Presidency. The latter remained as an un-elected

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