Laiklik and Nation-Building: How State-Religion-Society Relations Changed in Turkey under the Justice and Development Party

Chapter Four Laiklik and Nation-Building: How State–Religion–Society Relations Changed in Turkey under the Justice and Development Party Edgar Şar “Nation-building,” in its broadest sense, aims at creating a sufficient amount of commonality of interests, goals, and preferences among the members of a “nation” so that they feel like a part of it and wish to live together.1To that end, nation-building requires the creation and promotion of a common “national” identity for the unification of all people within the state. Nevertheless, national identity is usually not constructed with the participation of diverse social sections, but on the very contrary, it often becomes an arena of struggle among them.2 Particularly in the contexts where there is not a sufficient degree of elite consensus on subjective perceptions of history and politics, the fundamental beliefs and values, the foci of identification and loyalty, and the political knowledge and expectations,3 there might well be “a continuous struggle within the society over the ability to define who ‘we’ are as a nation.”4 The social sections that become so dominant as to capture state power can be expected to embark on nation-building by means of social engineering to terminate the continuous struggle over national identity5 by creating a majority.6 However, this strife is unlikely to end permanently and might even escalate if the process of nation-building is based on identitybased polarization and homogenization without paying any attention to the diversity within the society.7 Turkey sets quite a good example, where there has been a political polarization between different definitions of “who we are” and “who we want to be” as a nation. Although the struggle over the national identity is sometimes oversimplified and reduced to oppositional state–society relationship, whereby the state is constantly repressing the society,8 the identitarian, and partly ideological, conflict within the society and its capacity to shape the process of nation-building should by no means be underestimated. In these conflicts, whether between the state and the society or within the society 111 19_0073_Donmez.indb 111 3/28/19 5:16 AM 112 Edgar Şar itself, religion has always had a special place. The establishment of Turkey as a “secular” Republic did not change the fact that Islam looms large in the definition and representation of the Turkish nation. Therefore, state–religion–society relations and the Turkish model of secularism, or laiklik,9 that manages these relations have been developed in tandem with the process of nation-building throughout the Republican era. Laiklik and state–religion–society relations are also significant to understand the “New Turkey” under the Justice and Development Party (JDP) and its leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. A wide array of scholars who have dealt with Turkey’s transformation under Erdoğan seems to agree that Turkey has almost “reinvented” itself over the past decade.10 It is also obvious that this reinvention has been followed by a new process of nationbuilding modeled on Islamist-conservative values, whereby the JDP’s objective was to generate and preserve its majority within the society. According to the well-known narrative based on the “Old Turkey vs. New Turkey” that dominates the relevant literature, the new process of nation-building under the JDP represents the downfall of the omnipotent Kemalist regime based on the repression of the society by ultra-laicist means. While this narrative based on Kemalist–Islamist dichotomy may give an idea about how JDP started to change Turkey as it consolidated its grip on power, it would be over-simplistic to argue that the omnipotent Kemalist state project has been flawlessly imposed on a reluctant society for almost eighty years and that the JDP started to change everything in Turkey when it came to power in 2002. Therefore, analyzing Turkish political history by means of such dichotomies would not allow us to profoundly grasp the transformation of Turkish political life in the 2000s and the conditions that paved the way for it. Nor does it provide a right perspective to explain how laiklik—as one of the core principles of the nationbuilding process during the early Republican era—has transformed over time and what consequences this transformation had in contemporary Turkey. JDP’s incumbency is a turning point in Turkish political history in many respects. Nevertheless, to understand how laiklik and state–religion–society relations changed with the JDP-launched project of nation-building, one should look beyond the JDP era and clarify “what was there before.” According to the aforementioned narrative based on the “Old Turkey vs. New Turkey,” laiklik, as a solid, anti-religious state ideology, was persistently and oppressively implemented until JDP consolidated its grip on the state and “moderated” the state–religion–society relations. Here, too, this narrative is fallacious. In fact, as I elaborately discuss in the following paragraphs, laiklik has never been a properly defined principle but, on the very contrary, proved to be vulnerable to political developments throughout the entire Republican era. Therefore, in this chapter, I will also deal with how laiklik was before 19_0073_Donmez.indb 112 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 113 the JDP to clearly set forth how it was changed by the JDP by addressing the following questions: How were state–religion–society relations and laiklik projected in the early Republican era? How did they shift following the transition to multi-party democracy? How does the role of Islam change in the national identity? What consequences did these changes bring about leading into the 2000s? Although there is more than one turning point in the political history of laiklik in Turkey, JDP’s coming to power in 2002 as a conservative Islamist party led to an unprecedented debate on laiklik and, thus, is paid special attention. In the early years of the JDP era, many hoped that by embracing secular politics and liberal values, the JDP would have helped develop a softer and more democratic version of laiklik. Nevertheless, as it consolidates its power in the state institutions, the JDP and its leader Erdoğan embarked on a new process of nation-building, where the state-favored interpretation of Islam plays a much more definitive role. In this context, this study argues that the way laiklik was debated during the 2002–2010 period led to what I call the collapse of laiklik, which eventually paved the way for the process of “desecularization of the state,” which I indicate the incumbent JDP embarked on in tandem with its nation-building project modeled on a conservative and Islamist Weltanschauung. A SHORT HISTORY OF LAIKLIK (1924–2002): A PRINCIPLE OF ALL SEASONS? To understand how laiklik changed during the JDP’s incumbency, we should first reveal what it was like before. Laiklik has been a constitutionally defined characteristic of the state since 1937, which became unamendable in 1961 and has remained so since then. Having remained constitutionally unchanged over the decades, laiklik may well be expected to be a deep-rooted state principle with a set of steady political values and goals that all governments in the Republican era would endorse despite ideological differences. This is, however, far from reality. During the entire Republican era, state–religion– society relations have constantly changed in accordance with the shifting political landscape.11 Governments pursued almost antipodal policies towards religion for the sake of short-term political goals and used the guise of laiklik to legitimize them. Therefore, laiklik is more a principle of all seasons than a consistently preserved or gradually evolved state principle. The abolition of the caliphate in 1924 is generally taken as the beginning of the history of laiklik in Turkey. By abolishing the caliphate, the state did not only give up its “legitimate” authority over the Islamic umma at the cost 19_0073_Donmez.indb 113 3/28/19 5:16 AM 114 Edgar Şar of being accused of rejecting Islam and being kafur,12 but also it clearly set forth that the identity of the new Turkish nation was no longer to be defined within the so-called Islamo-Ottoman context.13 Nevertheless, Islam, as “the primary social identity maker,” was the only element that could unite Turkish-, Arabic-, Kurdic-, Circassian-, Albanian-, Bosnian-, and Laz-speaking populations and, thus, was one of the first issues to be addressed by the nationalist cadres that founded the Republic of Turkey.14 Therefore, despite the abolition of the caliphate, the state was not willing to relinquish its oversight and control over religion, and they instead founded a new office, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). The Diyanet was authorized to administer the mosques, religious lodges, and so on and to hire and fire imams and other mosque staff and to oversee the muftis.15 Following the abolition of the caliphate, the constitutional secularization of the state continued with the removal of Islam as the official religion from the Constitution in 1928, and it was finally complete with the introduction of laiklik as a constitutional characteristic of the state in 1937. Furthermore, throughout the 1920s and 1930s, many reforms were made for the secularization of the Turkish legal and educational systems. However significant these were at that time, laiklik could not be institutionalized in a way that would ensure a gradual development of separation between state and religion. According to Kemal Karpat, laiklik was not a sophisticated but rather a complementary element in the ideology of the founder Republican People’s Party (RPP). Underpinned and redefined by laiklik, nationalism was freed from the Islamo-Ottoman content.16 However, religion never lost its position as a key symbol in Turkish national identity at the grassroots level,17 which is the main reason why the Republican regime adopted an understanding of laiklik that sustained its predecessor regimes’ (the Hamidian and the Committee of Union and Progress) quest of controlling and instrumentalizing the religion rather than separating it from the state.18 Therefore, despite the constitutionalization of laiklik, on the one hand, the state extended its control over religion by marginalizing any religious interpretation other than the official one,19 and on the other hand, religion was used in the nation-building at the expense of causing systematic exclusion as in the examples of assimilation of Alevis and the law on wealth tax applied particularly to non-Muslims. Hence, in practice, laiklik fell short to encompass notions of civic citizenship that guarantee an inclusive and pluralistic polity.20 The post-World War II period marked a new era for Turkish democracy. The establishment of multi-party democracy, in 1946, brought about a much wider freedom of expression for various movements of thought.21 In the meantime, the onset of competitive politics that arose from the foundation 19_0073_Donmez.indb 114 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 115 of a new party, the Democrat Party (DP), somewhat enforced the ruling RPP to pay more attention to the masses’ expectations, at the cost of revising its policies of laiklik that had hitherto been consistently implemented.22 In the 7th Congress of RPP that was held in November 1947, it was widely voiced that conventional laiklik policies that had marginalized Islam throughout the single-party era had to be softened, and religion got to be the cement of the society.23 As a matter of fact, certain policies of laiklik were remarkably softened thereafter.24 The first-ever emphasis upon the “freedom of conscience” in the government program, the reintroduction of religious education in public schools, the opening of imam-hatip schools, and the opening of türbes to visit and state-led facilitation for haj are the most outstanding developments of this softening process. In the 1946–1950 period, religion and, thus, policies of laiklik apparently became a means of electioneering and have remained so since then. The interest-based clientelistic relationship between politics and religion took root in Turkey throughout the 1950s. Particularly early on in the decade, the ruling Democrat Party (DP) developed considerably affirmative relations with the conservative sections of the society, including Islamist communities, by restoring the ezan in Arabic, abolishing the ban over the activities of tekkes and tarikats, and extending the scope of the previously introduced religious education—turning it into compulsory in public schools and increasing the number of imam-hatip schools. As Ioannis N. Grigoriadis underlines, “The social engineering projects focusing on the marginalization of religion were no longer on the agenda.”25 These affirmative relations went so far as to form election alliances with some popular tarikats that survived state assaults throughout the single-party era and managed to organize significant networks of social support and influence, such as Nurcus.26 Taken altogether, the DP is generally identified with the “revival of Islam” through which its place in the public sphere was rehabilitated27 and Islamization gathered pace at the social level in the 1950s.28As Grigoriadis puts it: Islam was no more seen as the reason for the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the failure of the Turkish nation to keep up with political, economic, military, and intellectual developments in the West; it was increasingly seen as a source of social solidarity and substantial element of Turkish national identity.29 When compared with the single-party era of the 1930s and 1940s, the bi-party politics of the 1950s marked serious differences regarding state– religion–society relations. The instrumentalization of religion for political purposes that had begun during the last RPP government (1946–1950) under Prime Minister Şemsettin Günaltay continued at full speed during the 1950s.30 19_0073_Donmez.indb 115 3/28/19 5:16 AM 116 Edgar Şar The military junta that ousted the DP government and Prime Minister Adnan Menderes on May 27, 1960, was very critical of the state–religion– society relations developed by the DP throughout the 1950s. However, as opposed to the expectations, the leaders of the military junta did not pursue militant laicist policies. Despite elite debates that questioned its compatibility with laiklik, the Diyanet was not abolished, but instead, it became a constitutional institution to engage in religious activities in favor of the state.31 Thus, the state’s quest to further control religion remained despite the relatively liberal atmosphere that came out of the 1961 Constitution. Moreover, the instrumentalization of religion by the state gained a new dimension during the 1960s. Particularly, when the conservative right was in power, the religion was used as an ideological counterforce against growing socialism. The Islamic communities that had previously been banned and, benefiting from the freedom of organization envisaged by the new Constitution, took to the stage as associations and interest groups supported the conservative right.32 Given the fact that the Islamic movement was increasingly gaining strength and taking root in the society, religion got politicized and became an even more important instrument for the state. In the late 1960s, the Islamists got their own party for the first time that came to power in 1973 as the smaller coalition partner of the RPP and, later, as one of the partners of National Front coalitions. The existence of an Islamist party in the governments made itself evident, particularly in educational policies. Both the number of imam-hatip schools and their students marked a huge increase throughout the 1970s.33 “In the meantime, the state-led and funded religious schools were bearing fruit in terms of recruitment into state cadres. The graduates were not only religious functionaries but received places in universities and state bureaucracy.”34 Under the conditions of political pluralism condoned by the 1961 Constitution, more and more people and groups became a part of “centrifugal forces,” such as socialism and Kurdish nationalism in the 1970s. It was not unexpected that the state resorted to Islam as a key “centripetal force” in defining the Turkishness.35 The instrumentalization of religion by the state had never been as intensive as it was in the 1980s. Beyond an ideological counterforce, religion became the central instrument in the hand of the state to pursue comprehensive social engineering. “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis” was promoted as the official state ideology, and all other alternatives were presented as a threat to Turkish national culture.36 The expansion of the Diyanet and imamhatip schools and the introduction of mandatory religious classes in public schools are some of the prominent implementations of the military junta in the early 1980s. In spite of the state-led Islamization, the military junta never abandoned laiklik and always uttered that what was done was done for 19_0073_Donmez.indb 116 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 117 the sake of laiklik.37 Deniz Kandiyoti calls this “the transmogrification” of laiklik and contends that it aimed at further legitimizing the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis and outlawing all other alternatives, including the Islamic ones, to put forward laiklik as the preferred narrative.38 In other words, both Islam and laiklik were welcomed by the state, as far as state’s version of these were promoted.39 Following the departure of Kenan Evren, Turgut Özal’s Motherland Party adopted a more pragmatic approach in state–religion–society relations. The coup-sponsored conservatization of politics and society led to a further rise of political Islam in Turkey. It was Necmettin Erbakan’s Welfare Party (RP) that benefited from the transformation in the 1990s, and he managed to come to power, in 1996, as a senior partner of a coalition government. For the military, that was the initiator of this process with the 1980 coup, the unprecedentedly rising role of Islam in state and society was an unintended consequence, and it grew increasingly concerned about this process, of which it already had lost the control. The military intervened again in politics through a “soft coup” on February 28, 1997, which broke with “a pattern of state-Islam relations that allowed for negotiation and compromise between Turkey’s political Islamists and the establishment.”40 The abolition of secondary imam-hatip schools, the introduction of an eight-year mandatory schooling system, and the de facto ban on headscarves at public universities are some of the prominent measures that were taken during the February 28 Process. On the other hand, mandatory religious classes introduced by the military junta in the early 1980s remained intact in all schools, which indicate that the military was still supporting that the state controlled and, if necessary, instrumentalized religion in line with the “Turkish-Islamic Synthesis.”41 This short history of laiklik shows how it has become a “principle for all seasons” that was constantly used to legitimize the state–religion–society relations organized by the establishment of the day. The fact that laiklik has constantly been used as an instrument of legitimacy without having a set of consistent principles creates confusion about how the state has approached religion in Turkey. In the following section, I approach critically the existing narratives of laiklik to find out which one could account for its historical background throughout the Republican era. CONFLICTING NARRATIVES: WHAT KIND OF PRINCIPLE IS LAIKLIK? As I indicated in the previous section, state–religion–society relations in the Republican era have been politically inconsistent and interest-driven, and 19_0073_Donmez.indb 117 3/28/19 5:16 AM 118 Edgar Şar therefore, they make it difficult to make a coherent narrative on laiklik. Is there any defining characteristic of state–religion–society relations in Turkey despite the inconsistencies? What kind of a state–religion–society relation does laiklik envisage? Two contradictory narratives seem to dominate the literature. The first one, which for Kandiyoti achieved the stature of a “master narrative,”42 provides a reading of history, where the state, as a modern and secular one, has conventionally been hostile to religion, while the Turkish society and culture are mainly religious.43 According to Hakan Yavuz, for example, “modern Turkey, like a transgendered body with the soul of one gender in the body of another, is in constant tension… The soul of white Turkey and its Kemalist identity is in constant pain with the national body politic of Turkey.”44 In other words, the implementation of laiklik brought about an oppositional state–society relationship, where the values of the modern secular state are at odds with those of the larger society. This conflict spilled over even into the realm of habitus, cultural codes, and lifestyles45 and, thus, makes the public sphere a contested zone between the modern laiklik state and the religious/conservative society. Ahmet Kuru, for instance, maintains that laiklik, in the form of what he calls “assertive secularism,” always tried to remove religion from the public, privatize it, and confine it to the individual conscience, whereas the passive secularists, including the Muslim-conservative JDP, wanted to protect the freedom of conscience while avoiding to favor a particular religion.46 The other narrative provides an alternative reading of history full of observations that clearly diverge from those of the “master narrative.” It calls into question the secular vocation of laiklik, arguing that through the implementation of laiklik, the Turkish state has controlled and also promoted Islam.47 According to Andrew Davison, for instance, the Turkish state has never approached religion as a completely private matter and, thus, religion and state have never been entirely separate. The state, on the very contrary, has established its own version of Islam by institutionally supporting, financing, and promulgating it.48 Murat Somer, too, draws attention to the incompatibility of these claims with the “master narrative,” maintaining that “the state cannot simultaneously oppress/privatize and establish/promote religion.”49 Kuru and Alfred Stepan, whose main argument is that laiklik systematically excludes religion from the public sphere, claim that this argument is not incompatible with but complementary for Davison’s argument that the state has established and publicly promoted Islam through its understanding of laiklik.50 Somer opposes it, saying “I cannot see how this is possible” and continues: Whether or not Turkish state removes, or tries to remove, religion from the public realm is an empirically testable claim. This can be done for example by counting changes in the number of mosques, identifying state involvement in 19_0073_Donmez.indb 118 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 119 their construction, and observing other religion-related state practices in public realms such as education, social policy, public security, national defense, and regulation of the public sphere.51 In fact, the short history of laiklik, too, evidently shows that religion has constantly been controlled and instrumentalized by the state for political purposes.52 However different the ways to do it were throughout the 1923–2002 period, there is a significant common trait concerning the state’s approach to the religion, which can be summarized in two points. First, given the way the state instrumentalized religion throughout the Republican era, it is impossible to maintain, as the accounts based on a binary opposition between secular state and religious society do, that “the rise of Islamic actors owes its momentum exclusively, or even primarily, to dynamics emanating from the grassroots of society while the state remained secular.”53 The Turkish state’s actions, particularly during the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1980s, portray an “integrationist and symbiotic relationship” between state and religion where the state is the controlling and dominant party.54 Second, if we understand secularism as a political principle that is supposed to separate religious affairs from those of the state, the secular credentials of the laiklik appear fairly thin. As a matter of fact, “Turkish nationhood and claims of national belonging were never divorced from being Muslim and Sunni,”55 and Islam has constantly been promoted for nation-building, public morality, and bolstering state legitimacy.56 THE CONTEXT OF THE LAIKLIK IN THE 2000S In the aftermath of the February 28 Process, the military that had already intensified its tutelage over politics publicly launched a campaign against irtica (reaction). Having been classified as a threat to national security, this military-led campaign against irtica had several results that would have an impact on the political climate of the next period. Among these are the closure of the previously governing Welfare Party, removal of many military officers and bureaucrats from their posts due to their alleged Islamic lifestyle, and the ban on headscarves at all educational institutions. It was mainly the consequences of the February 28 Process and the military tutelage over politics that kept laiklik at the top of the national political agenda as Turkey was entering the new millennium. The three-party coalition government called an early election and scheduled it on November 3, 2002. In the course of the election campaigns, a newly founded political party attracted more notice than any other new formation that came out before the snap elections: the Justice and Development Party (JDP). The reason for that 19_0073_Donmez.indb 119 3/28/19 5:16 AM 120 Edgar Şar attraction was not only that the new party appeared to be, by far, in the lead in most of the opinion polls but also that the party openly distinguished itself from Milli Görüş (National View), the Islamist ideology of its predecessors, by declaring itself as a “conservative democratic party,” which, unlike its predecessors, did not have a categorical antagonism to the Western values and laiklik. JDP’s decision to abandon the traditional ideology of its prominent founders and to accept and remain within the system was undoubtedly related to the fate of the WP, which had been banned during the February 28 Process. During the November 3 elections, JDP came in first and won by an overwhelming majority in the parliament. The main reason behind JDP’s preference to remain within the system was not to relinquish its right to use the means of power, decision-making mechanisms, and its overwhelming majority in the parliament. “Acting and keeping itself within the system, JDP could consolidate its power to challenge the system and be its ‘changer’ or even its ‘annihilator.’”57 Nevertheless, in its first term, the JDP was far from an anti-system party, but on the contrary, it challenged the military tutelage over politics through certain legislation, emphasizing the importance of political inclusion, democracy, and freedom of conscience. Among those was the reform package of 2003 that aimed at the demilitarization of the system for the adaptation to the European Union (EU) norms being the most remarkable. Despite the JDP’s victory in the November 3 elections that enabled it to form a single-party government, the military tried to keep its political power and made sure that the February 28 Process continued. In that context, the concerns about laiklik arising from the ideological background of JDP’s prominent leaders were predominantly voiced by the top generals and high court judges as well as President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who himself was a former chief justice of the Constitutional Court. For them, laiklik is not merely a political principle that denotes to the separation between state and religious affairs but is a “philosophy of life” that refers to the separation of all worldly affairs from religion.58 Being defined as such, laiklik was apparently not a political principle that is to guarantee basic rights and freedoms but, on the very contrary, a comprehensive doctrine that is superior to them. Meanwhile, the JDP took a remarkably accommodationist stance on laiklik, obviously considering that it was the Achilles’ heel of the former political parties of Milli Görüş. According to the JDP’s “conservative democratic” approach, religion is a social phenomenon in the first place and, thus, deserves to have proper relations with politics.59 In this context, the function of laiklik is to enable the state to treat all beliefs in an egalitarian way and to create a pluralist environment where religious differences can coexist.60 Hence, “laiklik is the guarantee of religious freedom, as it is understood in all stable de- 19_0073_Donmez.indb 120 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 121 mocracies.”61 Consequently, defining laiklik as compatible with conservative democracy that it officially held, the JDP wanted to show that it was possible to relate religion to politics in a “pluralist and democratic” basis.62 THE STRIFE BETWEEN THE STATE AND THE JDP (2002–2008): THE COLLAPSE OF LAIKLIK During the early 2000s, a clash started between these two diverging understandings of laiklik: on one side was the comprehensive laiklik advocated by the state, namely the President, the military, and the judiciary, and on the other hand was what can be called “political” laiklik that was asserted by the top JDP officials and liberals.63 Within that period, what happened between these different approaches was not a sophisticated deliberation that would result in a democratic, pluralist, and inclusionary conclusion but rather a clash based on “my version is more the true meaning of laiklik” claims. I think that the reason for the lack of a fruitful intellectual and public deliberation on “what should laiklik be for?” is twofold.64 First, the supporters of comprehensive laiklik never believed that JDP had given up Milli Görüş or was genuine in its remarks on laiklik and never trusted it in the sense that the JDP had an anti-secularist “hidden agenda.” As a matter of fact, President Sezer, with his veto power, the military, with their public remarks and “e-coup” on April 27, 2007, and the judiciary, with the closure case, were openly at war with JDP. Second, the liberal-looking discourse of political laiklik that JDP developed by emphasizing freedom of conscience was never supported with concrete actions. JDP has never been as effective for the rights of Alevis and nonMuslims as it has been for the headscarf ban and the educational restrictions on imam-hatip students, which had been the most significant problems of its own social base. More importantly, the JDP has mainly preserved the status quo with regard to the Diyanet and obligatory religious instruction in public schools and, thus, failed to extend its emancipatory activism to encompass all individuals and groups in Turkey.65 As a result, the polemical discussions on “the true meaning of laiklik” not only failed to lead to a broad-based debate on how laiklik had to be rethought so that freedom of conscience and equality could go beyond rhetoric and be realized in practice, but it also made laiklik a source of confusion and tension. This source of confusion came about because neither the supporters of comprehensive laiklik nor those of “political” laiklik could produce a consistency between their discourses and actions. Although both parties justify their standpoints by referring to freedom and equality, their practices were either clearly anti-democratic or fell short to be consistent with their discourses. 19_0073_Donmez.indb 121 3/28/19 5:16 AM Edgar Şar 122 Even more importantly, it became a source of tension because the more comprehensive secularists emphasizing JDP’s “insincerity” about laiklik resorted to anti-democratic ways to undermine it, the more laiklik became a social fault line that deepened the polarization between the JDP’s social base and those in opposition. Meanwhile, laiklik started to be increasingly considered as ideology reminiscent of military tutelage, and thus, those voicing their concerns about it were labeled as anti-democrats. This process resulted in the collapse of laiklik,66 whereby desecularization was almost considered as a precondition for democratization.67 NATION-BUILDING UNDER JDP: DESECULARIZATION OF THE STATE (2008–2018) I have so far underlined that laiklik is a “principle of all seasons” that is not based on a principled separation between state and religion. In that sense, with its ends, institutions and law, and policies that allow for the control and instrumentalization of religion, Turkey has never been a truly secular, or laik, polity. Nevertheless, following the collapse of laiklik and the power consolidation of the JDP government, the state has moved relentlessly away from laiklik, becoming less secular even in respects that it had been previously secular.68 In this respect, the process of desecularization of state is carried out in tandem with the process of nation-building, both of which takes place to the extent that the state takes on a comprehensive outlook through its selfunderstanding and policies and tries to implant a comprehensive doctrine or worldview on the society, usually by using social engineering methods. To analyze the process of desecularization of state, I use Rajeev Bhargava’s “three orders of connection” and argue that the state apparently exceeded the limits of connection with religion for a secular state and de-secularized itself at the levels of ends, institutions, and law and policies.69 Ends Ends of state are made up almost purely by written and spoken discourses, and thus, their analysis always includes the risk of being too idealistic or mere speculation and not reflecting what is indeed going on. To take a related and familiar example, Turkey has constitutionally called itself a laik state, namely, a state that separates religion from its affairs. However, as I have shown in previous sections, this was hardly the case throughout the entire Republican era. For this reason, reach valid conclusions regarding the transformation of ends, it is important to examine also the concrete ac- 19_0073_Donmez.indb 122 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 123 tions—such as adoption of new laws, policies, and institutions—that this transformation concomitantly brings about. Within this context, the analysis of ends is helpful for at least two reasons. First, ends reflect short- and longterm goals and objectives of a state and thus demonstrate whether this set-up will be followed by a process of continuity or change. In fact, a process of change mostly begins with a change in the level of discourse, which gives an idea about the route of that change. In that respect, ends loom large for the process of nation-building too. Second, a change in ends not only sets forth a new set of goals and objectives but also designates how to achieve them and prepares the ground to do so. Therefore, when analyzed in tandem with the subsequent actions, ends can reveal much more than a mere discourse could about a process of change. Taking all these into account, a scrutiny of ends of state gives an idea about, if not completely explains, the story of change during the JDP rule. In terms of ends, the first remarkable change took place with regard to Weltanschauung. In the earlier period of its rule as a party that claimed itself to be the representative of the victimized and excluded masses, the JDP emphasized that the social diversity is under the guarantee of universal values, human rights, and freedoms and the state should recognize and not intervene on it.70 Here, the JDP explicitly criticizes state’s resort to social engineering techniques in dealing with the groups that it claims to represent, particularly during the February 28 Process, and refers to democracy, human rights, and universal values as the guarantee of social diversity as well as the solution of that problem. In the later stages of its rule, however, the emphasis on universal values gradually decreased and was ultimately replaced by the reference to “our ancient values” (kadim değerlerimiz), which the restoration or the building of Yeni Türkiye (New Turkey) was to be based on.71 In Ahmet Davutoğlu’s terms, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister who is also known as the originator of this discourse, it is clear that these concepts point out some kind of discontent about how Turkey’s identity was constructed in the period of modernity and nationalization, and restoration of “ancient civilization’s values”72 aims at building a new identity and, thus, transforming the society.73 In this regard, the following quotation from Aziz Babuşçu, then head of JDP’s Istanbul Organization and now JDP Istanbul MP, indicates this new process of nation-building: Those who were somehow our partners over the past ten years, say liberals, will not be able to be our partner in ten years to come. . . . No matter if they put up with it or not, next ten years will make up the “building period” and the building period will not be as they would like it to be. Our government has accomplished much in ten years, yet all these accomplishments may easily be ruled out, unless 19_0073_Donmez.indb 123 3/28/19 5:16 AM 124 Edgar Şar they are written in state’s institutional memory, for which AK Party [JDP] must remain in power for a longer period.74 As this quotation clearly puts forward, the concepts of “building,” “restoration,” and “ancient values” that underlie the new discourses clearly point to a new process of nation-building, which requires, as I will elaborate herein, the use of social engineering techniques. </indent> The remarkable change in Weltanschauung, which reshaped the state’s stance in its relations with the society, brought about an expected change in the role of religion in state–society relations. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the JDP took a considerably accommodationist stance towards laiklik, interpreting it as a quality of state that guarantees equal treatment towards all religions and beliefs.75 Although party and government officials have mostly preserved this interpretation of laiklik so far,76 a set of new ends were adopted that charge the state with religious-moral “missions.”77 These missions, which are mainly concerned with education, youth, and children, are to be accomplished to realize the greater societal imagination.78 Education of children and youth comprise a greater part of the new ends of state. In 2002, the JDP declared that its education policy would be designed so as to raise a generation that is free in thought and conscience.79 Later, however, the ends of education became radically comprehensive at the level of discourse. In 2014, the envisioned aim of education was declared to be for “a youth that is moral and faithful to its past and values.”80 Moreover, President Erdoğan made a number of statements where he refers to education as a crucial means to reach the imaginary society, and for this purpose, education should be “radically reconstructed.”81 He said more than once that it was part of the government’s objectives to raise not atheists but “devout generations”82 and that the education system should offer a particular lifestyle to students from preschool onwards.83 Institutions The absence of a church-like religious institution and a clerical class “equipped with holy abilities to speak on behalf of God and religion”84 in Islam was generally used by states as a source of legitimacy to engage in religious affairs. In the Turkish case, as a matter of fact, although the foundation of the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) is attributed to the state’s response to the social need for the provision of religious services,85 it is a fact that the state aimed at keeping religion under its control by this means. Hence, as far as Turkey is concerned, the state never fully disconnected itself from religion at the institutional level, and Diyanet has always been the key actor in state’s engagement in religious affairs throughout the Republican era. 19_0073_Donmez.indb 124 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 125 A supervisory engagement of state in the provision of religious services by public or private entities does not necessarily contradict with laiklik.86 However, in the case of Diyanet, there are at least two features that are, by definition, exclusionary. First, Diyanet’s function is beyond providing religious services and includes the enlightenment of society about Islam, which makes it an administrative tool to propagate and inculcate official view about religion and Islam.87 Second, despite being financed by tax money as a governmental institution, Diyanet is providing services exclusively for Sunni Muslims in Turkey. In other words, Alevis, non-Muslims, and non-believers are neither represented in the only legal religious institution of the country that they are equal citizens of nor able to claim any kind of tax exemption for financing an exclusively Sunni institution. Moreover, being the only legal religious institution that is constitutionally charged with seeking national unity and solidarity,88 Diyanet is a source of homogenizing and monist power that all Turkish governments have made use of in various forms in line with power relations and conjunctural developments.89 That is to say that independent of the JDP’s policies, the way that Diyanet is organized has been one of the conventional flaws of the laiklik in Turkey. However, during the JDP era, the Diyanet further expanded, which enlarged the scope of its exclusionary practices, contributing to the process of desecularization of state at the institutional level. This expansion can be analyzed in two respects: field of activity and budget. To begin with, Diyanet significantly expanded regarding its field of activity in the 2000s and especially after 2010. Even before this expansion, in fact, Diyanet was never merely an organization to provide religious services but always had certain political and sociological functions. However, with the revision of its law on organization in 2010, Diyanet became a much more influential governmental institution that had an important position in the network of political and social relations.90 In other words, Diyanet’s activities spilled out of the mosques and spread into new fields both at home and abroad. As for at home, the expansion of its working field led Diyanet to become an instrument of social engineering in the hands of the government, particularly in the field of social policy.91 This is evident in the deepening cooperation between Diyanet and several national ministries: • Diyanet’s cooperation protocol with the Ministry of Family and Social Policies in 2011 enlarged the scope of its activities regarding woman and family and aimed at “protecting and strengthening family structure and values to hand down to the next generations and raising awareness over the problems that threaten the family and its members within society.” In 2013, likewise, the ministry signed a protocol with the Turkiye Diyanet Foundation, which aimed at organizing joint meetings with several institutions to 19_0073_Donmez.indb 125 3/28/19 5:16 AM 126 Edgar Şar enlighten the family on psychological, economic, cultural, and religious matters in line with religious values. Herewith, Diyanet became a part of the policy-making and implementation process on contemporary social policy issues such as gender equality, violence against women, family, and upbringing of children.92 • Diyanet’s cooperation protocol with the Ministry of Youth and Sports on “values education” dated February 26, 2015, aims at “contributing to youth’s spiritual development,” “providing the demanding students with instruction on religion and values,” and “organizing umrah trips for the spiritual development of the youth.”93 • Diyanet’s cooperation protocol with the Ministry of Health, which was dated January 1, 2015, aims at providing “faith-based moral motivation” for the demanding sick and their acquaintances in the public hospitals.94 • Diyanet’s cooperation protocol with the Ministry of Justice, which was dated February 10, 2011, aims at improving the moral and religious emotions of the arrested and convicted people to contribute to their process of decarceration.95 The expansion of Diyanet’s field of activity is evident in its international activities as well. In fact, Diyanet’s work abroad is nothing new and can be traced back to the 1970s, when it started to provide growing Turkish immigrant communities in Europe with religious services. A special department to conduct foreign affairs within the Diyanet was established in 1983, and it has been organized in various European countries since then.96 Nevertheless, with the new organizational law introduced in 2010, Diyanet started focusing more on its international activities.97 These activities are carried out by Diyanet’s foreign organizations and the Turkiye Diyanet Foundation and include providing humanitarian aid for victimized Muslims around the world, building mosques around the world, providing religious education for Turkish and foreigner Muslims both abroad and in Turkey, printing and handing out the Qur’an, opening up schools abroad, organizing conferences, panels, symposiums, and so on. Like in its activities at the national level, Diyanet’s international activities that have a transnational target group, also aim at providing “healthy information” regarding Islam. However, given the fact that it is a governmental institution, Diyanet’s activities abroad can hardly be thought separately from the Turkish government’s foreign policy plans and objectives. As a matter of fact, the rising international activism of the Diyanet has gone hand in hand with the civilizational discourse that dominated the JDP’s foreign policy since 2010. Therefore, being a governmental institution that affirms Turkish official ideology and values regarding Islam, Diyanet’s activism abroad can be considered as a means of cultural imperialism to achieve foreign policy goals of the Turkish government.98 19_0073_Donmez.indb 126 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 127 The second aspect that illustrates Diyanet’s expansion in the 2000s, though partially only, is concerned with its budget. Having remarkably expanded so far, the Diyanet, with its branches overseas that serve the Turkish diasporas, nowadays commands the second largest budget among the institutions within Turkish bureaucracy.99 In her profound analysis of Diyanet’s budget, Nil Mutluer points out the fact that a considerable part of Diyanet’s activities, particularly those introduced after 2010, have been carried out by the Turkiye Diyanet Foundation, whose budget and personnel data is not open to the public. Given the fact that Diyanet’s official budget, which is a part of the governmental budget, has been subject to remarkable changes over decades in line with economic and political conjuncture, Mutluer underlines, and analyzing the Turkiye Diyanet Foundation’s budget would help reveal much more regarding Diyanet’s recent expansion.100 Nevertheless, Diyanet’s budget analysis is solely illustrative enough to mark its distinguished expansion that started in the 2000s. In this regard, I will refer to two data analyses. The first one is about the real budget amounts of Diyanet. The 2000s marked the biggest real increases in Diyanet’s budget throughout the entire Republican era. The real increase, in 2012 with respect to 2002, is 176 percent.101 The second one is concerned with a comparison between the budget increases of Diyanet and the amounts appropriated for other policy areas, such as education, health, and transport, each of which has its own ministry to be responsible for. The budget increase of Diyanet overweighed that of other important budget items, such as health, education, and culture and tourism, in the 2002–2012 period. In 2002, for instance, Diyanet’s budget was 5.5 percent of the education budget and 6.29 percent of the health budget, whereas in 2012, these ratios became 7.56 percent and 8.82 percent, respectively. Moreover, as Mutluer rightfully underlines, given the wide range of activities that the Turkiye Diyanet Foundation carries out, the increase in the budget for Diyanet-overseen activities is probably much more remarkable than it seems with the available data.102 Law and Policies Desecularization of state at the level of laws and policies is evident in many social policy areas, such as education, family, woman, youth, and so on. In each of these, the government has been recently pursuing conspicuously homogenizing and exclusionary policies that reflect a particular ideological Weltanschauung and aims at designing the society accordingly. Knowing that each process of desecularization that these policy areas have been through is a subject broad enough to be dealt with by separate theses, I would like to focus exclusively on educational policies owing to two main factors. First, being one of the widest policy areas, education touches on each social policy 19_0073_Donmez.indb 127 3/28/19 5:16 AM 128 Edgar Şar area specified above and, thus, the government’s approach while forming and pursuing educational policies is usually reflective of its approach to other social policy areas. Therefore, analyzing educational policies enables to draw indicative and valid conclusions regarding the desecularizing stance of the state while enacting law and policies. Second, particularly in Turkish political history, education has always been the first policy area to be reorganized whenever there was a change in the dominant official ideology. To implant and indoctrinate the official ideology over the younger generations, social engineering techniques used by the state are usually manifested first through educational policies.103 In Turkey, the 2000s inherited some substantial problems regarding the management and content of education, most of which were the legacy of the coup d’état of 1980 and the February 28 Process. Among these were the most notable ones, including compulsory religious instruction in public schools, the headscarf ban at universities, and the limitations on imam-hatip students to enter universities. The JDP governments’ officials have constantly voiced their objection to the legacies of these coups but took a conspicuously selective stance in abandoning and reversing the policies of these legacies. As a matter of fact, whilst the problematic laws and policies regarding the freedoms of headscarfed students and women and imam-hatip students were eventually resolved, other problems of the educational system that created exclusions for Alevis, non-Muslims, other minorities, non-believers, and so on remained not only unresolved but also clearly worsened.104 It is possible to argue that the worsening of educational policies, regarding both management and content, points out to the process of desecularization of the state at the level of law and policies. In what follows, I would like to provide some empirical data that explicitly reveals this process. To begin with, management of education is an important element of inclusive education. For the educational system to be inclusive, managerial elements such as legislation, policy-formation, and implementation should also be inclusive, participatory, and non-discriminatory.105 In Turkey, however, the period between 2010 and 2016 witnessed a clear regress in the inclusiveness of educational management in at least two ways. First, the Turkish educational systems underwent a substantial revision in 2012, and the processes of policy formation and legislation were harshly criticized as not being inclusive and participatory. In fact, the bill of the “4+4+4 Educational System,” as it is publicly known, was neither developed in a participatory way nor discussed sufficiently by the public. Even throughout the legislation process, where public discussion mechanisms by means of parliamentary commissions and sub-commissions of civil society representatives are procedurally definite, there was only limited public debate, and eventually, the bill remained nearly unrevised after all feedback had been given by the stakeholders.106 The report 19_0073_Donmez.indb 128 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 129 of the Education Reform Initiative (ERG) draws attention to the fact that the bill was apparently not based on a preplanned governmental program either. The bill was released to the public after the 2011 election was won by the JDP, and JDP did not mention in its election declarations about such a substantial change to the educational system. The bill was based merely on the advice of the National Educational Council, which is the highest advisory council for the National Ministry of Education and is responsible for examining the educational system to improve its quality and for taking advisory decisions. In this regard, the bill may be taken to have certain legitimacy given the existence of representatives and stakeholders in the council. However, this reveals a further problem regarding the composition of the council. In 2010, with a substantial by-law change, the ratio of ministry-appointed members of the council increased from 60 to 75 percent. The ERG report puts forward that with this change the contribution of the council to the supposedly participatory formation of educational policies is open to discussion.107 Moreover, despite all of the problems regarding its composition and non-transparent membership appointments, in its 19th summit in 2014, the council brought forth quite substantial propositions, such as the abolition of mixed education and the intensification of religious education in public schools. The decisions concerning the substantial elements of education could be publicly debated, but only after they become definite. This is a structural problem for the inclusive and participatory management of education.108 Another development about the management of education that threatens both state impartiality and inclusiveness of education is the increasing engagement of a set of foundations, all publicly known to have particular religious identities that are close to that of the JDP, with the management and the content of public education. According to the available data, the Ministry of National Education signed twenty-two protocols regarding religious education with certain foundations. These include TÜRGEV, Ensar Foundation, Hizmet Foundation, İlim Yayma Cemiyeti, and Şuurlu Öğretmenler Derneği.109 I find it substantially problematic that these foundations engage with public education for at least two reasons. First, as I underlined earlier, these foundations declare themselves to affirm particular comprehensive doctrines in their missions and visions that include elements such as “spiritual dynamics,” “ethical development,” “jihadist consciousness,” and “spreading of the truth.”110 Thereby, engagement of these foundations with regular national education activities would certainly point out the involvement of such thick and comprehensive elements in public education, which undoubtedly destroy the prospects of inclusive education. Secondly, the protocols that the ministry or the directorates of national education signed with these foundations mostly involve certain objectives and purposes, particularly regarding the content of education, which, from a legal perspective, directly fall into 19_0073_Donmez.indb 129 3/28/19 5:16 AM 130 Edgar Şar the area of responsibility of the ministry itself, and this makes sense, given the fact that inclusion of public education can better be guaranteed by public institutions than private foundations with particular Weltanschauung. Arguably, due to legal concerns, the JDP government has been recently working on a bill on the establishment of a new state-mandated foundation called Maarif Vakfı,111 which is supposed to take over the activities of the Ministry of National Education abroad and train its own instructors. According to the bill passed on June 17, 2016, the board of trustees will have seven permanent members, appointed by the president and three appointed by the council of ministers, and an amount of one million Turkish liras (TL) will be transferred to the foundation from the budget of the Ministry of National Education. The opposition parties severely objected the bill drawing attention to the risks of a foundation that is managerially dependent on the governing party’s leaders taking over a part of national ministry’s tasks and budget for the inclusiveness of education and impartiality of state.112 The second element of inclusive education is the content of education. For the educational system to be inclusive, the content of education should meet the criteria of neutrality and objectivity and must not include any discriminatory element. So far, the curriculum of Turkish public education has been profoundly handled by a number of academic works as well as various reports regarding the content of education. Due to the limitations of space, I can neither refer to all of these works nor provide a new examination of the entire curriculum, but owing to its prevalent place in the debates on laiklik, I would rather focus on the issue of religious instruction and its content in public education. Religious instruction in public schools has been a constitutional provision since 1982. From the perspective of inclusive education, religious instruction in Turkish public schools (the course “Religious Culture and Ethics”) has two substantial problems. First, it is among the compulsory courses of the curriculum, and an exemption is possible merely for non-Muslim pupils and based on declaration. Nevertheless, reports of some minority communities reveal that there have been some cases where non-Muslim pupils’ parents faced either bureaucratic or practical difficulties in using their right of exemption.113 Second, being a “religious course” on a particular interpretation of Sunni Islam rather than a “course on religions,” the curriculum of the compulsory “Religious Culture and Ethics” is monist, exclusionary, and propagandist. The imposition of Sunni religious instruction to the Alevis, non-Muslims, or non-believers has long been discussed in public, and this problem became a matter of judicial cases several times. Turkish administrative courts gave contradictory rulings on the issue. Whereas provincial administrative courts of Sakarya and Sivas found the curriculum of the course one-dimensional and 19_0073_Donmez.indb 130 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 131 exclusionary for Alevis, the provincial administrative court of Ankara found it acceptable and “supra-sectarian,” and the Council of State approved its ruling.114 The issue was brought before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 2007 and 2014. In 2007, the ECHR ruled that the course of “Religious Culture and Ethics” seeks to infuse a specific religious interpretation and thus is against the criteria of neutrality and objectivity as required by the law of human rights.115 The court also drew attention to the inexistence of a non-discriminatory exemption mechanism. Following this ruling, the curriculum of the course “Religious Culture and Ethics” was revised twice. However, as Mine Yıldırım reveals, despite some positive changes, the curriculum still maintains its characteristics of being a religious education of Sunni Islam116 and is thus against the Toledo Guiding Principles on Teaching about Religions and Beliefs in Public Schools.117 As a matter of fact, in 2014, the ECHR almost repeated its ruling regarding the compulsory religious instruction in Turkey, drawing attention to the need for a neutral and pluralist content for the course.118 In fact, the courses regarding religion and belief offered in public education are directly related to human rights, particularly in the context of freedom of thought and conscience. As ECHR rulings also reveal, Turkey has done very little to make the religious education compatible with human rights. Within the context of the European Convention of Human Rights, the courses on religion and belief should be not compulsory but optional, and the content has to be neutral and egalitarian. Furthermore, the right of exemption should be performed without having to declare one’s belief and granted to all.119 Nevertheless, while problems regarding the compulsory “Religious Culture and Ethics” course are still unresolved, a new set of elective courses regarding religion and belief—“Qur’an,” “The Life of Prophet Mohammed,” and “Religious Basics”—was introduced with the adoption of 4+4+4 Educational System. The fact that these courses are elective courses does not mean that they are totally compatible with freedom of thought and conscience, but without the state taking certain measures, these elective courses can turn into a mechanism of declaration of belief and pressure.120 The ERG report draws attention to the fact that parents or pupils might feel obliged to elect these courses to avoid any probable discrimination and exclusion.121 Besides, the report reveals that several non-Muslim and Alevi pupils had to elect these courses due to practical inadequacies in public schools across Turkey.122 Therefore, the state must guarantee that these elective courses do not become de facto compulsory courses by offering a sufficient number of alternative courses. Furthermore, the state should be neutral, take a pluralist stand, and respect diversity in deciding what courses to offer as well as their content, financing, and implementation. 19_0073_Donmez.indb 131 3/28/19 5:16 AM 132 Edgar Şar CONCLUSION The most apparent indication for the fact that the JDP under President Erdoğan embarked on a new nation-building process is that the national and state identity in Turkey looks somehow very different today, both from inside and outside, then it was a decade ago. As I emphasized earlier in this chapter, the national identity is an area of constant struggle over the ability to define “who we are as a nation,” and having “conquered”123 the state, the JDP managed to remain the winner of this struggle throughout its sixteenyear incumbency. Religion has always been central to the national and state identity throughout the Republican era. During the early Republican period, laiklik was of critical importance for the building of the “Turkish nation.” Although the founding cadres of the Republic tried to marginalize, or at least minimize, the role of Islam in the newly built national identity, the Islamic identity was almost the only element that could unite different populations that were supposed to make up the nation. Religion has never lost its significance at the grassroots level, and the newly founded Republic preferred to establish a sort of state–religion–society relationship, whereby it keeps religion under control rather than completely separate its affairs from those of religion. Therefore, laiklik could not be properly institutionalized as the separation between religious and state affairs. Separation remained very limited to certain social areas. With the introduction of multi-party politics, religion became a political instrument in the hands of the governments and political parties. Particularly in the 1980s, the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis became the official ideology, through which the state managed to remarkably transform the society by using social engineering techniques. This social transformation paved the way for the Islamists to become prominent in the divided political arena of the 1990s and dominant in the 2000s. When it came to power in 2002, the JDP had to face the entire state: the military, the judiciary, and the bureaucracy. It took a long time and many struggles for the JDP to conquer the state from them and form its own military, judiciary, and bureaucracy. It had to make and end alliances to remain in power. The fact that in the early years in power the JDP was mainly confronted by the state that was formed during the February 28 Process created a perception based on an urban legend that the state had always been ultralaicist and Kemalist in Turkey, which prevailed all the way through the Republican era until the JDP came to power and did away with it. This narrative neglects the transformations that the state has been through during the entire Republican era. As a matter of fact, without the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis 19_0073_Donmez.indb 132 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 133 becoming the official ideology as of the early 1980s, Islamists would never have been so powerful in the first place. As a result of the fight between the state and the JDP, laiklik became more vulnerable than ever. As I repeatedly underlined, laiklik was not based on a proper but a partial or selective separation between state and religious affairs. The battle between the JDP and the state was a critical juncture, when the flawed understanding of laiklik could have been fixed with the idea of a state that guarantees freedom of conscience and equality rather than controls and instrumentalizes the religion. As the idea that political Islam can coexist with democracy and freedom flourished, and the concepts such as “Muslim democracy” and “moderate Islam” were widely raised by academic circles, Turkey, under the JDP, consolidated its profile as the exemplary model for other countries with Muslim majority populations before the international community. Undoubtedly, as a political movement that had suffered much from state-led exclusion during the February 28 Process, the JDP’s democratic and liberal discourse in the early 2000s was found credible by secular liberals at home as well as by the international community.124 Those who expected Turkey to become a model of liberal “Muslim democracy” ruled by conservative Muslims who embraced pluralist values ruled out the possibility that the JDP would instrumentalize state power to do social engineering and impose its own comprehensive doctrine over the entire society when it consolidates its power. Nevertheless, the JDP was apparently not eager to relinquish its “right” to benefit from having conquered the state, and many intellectuals who could initiate a fruitful debate on how to fix laiklik relentlessly sided with the JDP without properly questioning its intentions. Therefore, the laiklik collapsed, and the JDP finally had the adequate power to embark on a new process of nation-building and to redefine “who we are as a nation.” The new nation-building was put into effect with a relentless process of desecularization of the state and a corresponding project of social engineering. If we consider the building of Turkish national identity, of which being Turk and Sunni is an inseparable part and Turkish state’s conventional institutional support and finance (of an own version) of Islam as symptoms of a “covert establishment” of Sunni Islam in disguise of laiklik, then we can well conclude that with the process of desecularization of the state at the level of ends, institutions, and law and policies, the establishment becomes overt, through which a particular interpretation of Sunni Islam moves beyond being a defining element of national identity and becomes the incontestable official ideology of the state at the levels of ends, institutions, and law and policies. In this respect, the new process of nation-building under the JDP should be read as a story of both continuity and change. Whereas the “sacred synthesis” of being Turkish and Sunni continues to be the definition of “Turkishness,” 19_0073_Donmez.indb 133 3/28/19 5:16 AM 134 Edgar Şar due to the unprecedented process of desecularization the state has never been as far away from laiklik as it is today. NOTES 1. See Alberto Alesina and Bryony Reich, “Nation-building,” NBER Working Paper No. w18839 (February 2013), 2; and Joseph Zajda, “Nation-Building, Identity and Citizenship Education: Introduction,” in Nation-Building, Identity and Citizenship Education: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, edited by Joseph Zajda, Holger Daun, and Lavrence S. Saha, 2–3 (Springer, 2009). 2. Toni Alaranta, National and State Identity in Turkey (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 13. 3. For Archie Brown, this is the definition of what he calls “political culture.” His conception of political culture is so broad as to reflect a “common identity” through its reference to the questions of how the past is perceived from present and how the present is shaped by the past. See “Introduction,” in Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States, edited by Archie Brown and Jack Gray, 1 (London: The Macmillan Press, 1979). Besides, the “elite consensus” is taken to be a factor of successful nation-building, without which the elements of the common national identity cannot be spread widely among the people. See Raphael Utz, “Nations, Nation-Building an Cultural Intervention: A Social Science Perspective,” Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law 9 (2005: 633. 4. Alaranta, National and State Identity in Turkey, 15. 5. Zajda, Nation-Building, Identity and Citizenship Education: Introduction,” 4. 6. See Karl W. Deutsch, “Nation-Building and National Development,” in Nation Building in Comparative Contexts, edited by Karl W. Deutsch and William J. Foltz, 9–12 (New York: Routledge, 2017). 7. See Utz, “Nations, Nation-Building an Cultural Intervention,” 641–47. 8. See Hakan Yavuz, “Cleansing Islam from the Public Sphere,” Journal of International Affairs 54, no. 1 (2000): 21; Berna Turam, Secular State and Religious Society: Two Forces in Play in Turkey (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); and Ahmet T. Kuru, Secularism and State Policies towards Religion: The United States, France and Turkey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 9. Laiklik means secularism. It has its roots in French word laïque and is used as being synonymous for laïcité. The similarity between the concepts is not linguistic only. Many have compared French laïcité and Turkish laiklik in literature, generally emphasizing upon their “assertive” character and the limitations they set to the public visibility of religion. (See Kuru, Ibid.). Nevertheless, despite these linguistic and conceptual similarities with French laïcité, laiklik has been a quality of the state of Turkey, which allows it to intervene in religious affairs intensively. As İştar Gözaydın shows, this kind of understanding of laiklik is inherited from Turkey’s territorial ancestors, the Ottoman and Byzantine Empires. See “Bizans, Osmanlı ve Cumhuriyet… Üçünde de din Devletin Kontrolünde,”January 28, 2015, retrieved from http://sosyal. 19_0073_Donmez.indb 134 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 135 hurriyet.com.tr/yazar/ahmet-hakan_131/bizans-osmanli-ve-cumhuriyet-ucunde-dedin-devletin-kontrolunde_28065223, accessed September 24, 2018. 10. Alaranta, National and State Identity in Turkey, 2. 11. Murat Somer, “Is Turkish Secularism Antireligious, Reformist, Separationist, Integrationist, or Simply Undemocratic?” Journal of Church and State 55, no. 3 (2013: 592. 12. Niyazi Berkes, Türkiyede Çağdaşlaşma (Istanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2009), 506–8. 13. Kemal Karpat, Türk Siyasi Tarihi (Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 2011), 58. 14. Ioannis N. Grigoriadis, Instilling Religion in Greek and Turkish Nationalism: A “Sacred Synthesis” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 2–3. 15. Bernard Lewis, Modern Türkiye’nin Doğuşu (Ankara: Arkadaş Yayınları, 2013), 557. 16. Karpat, Türk Siyasi Tarihi, 58–59. 17. Ibid., 58; Grigoriadis, Instilling Religion in Greek and Turkish Nationalism, 62–67. 18. See Haldun Gülalp, “Enlightenment by Fiat: Secularization and Democracy in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies 41, no. 3, (2005): 351–72; Grigoriadis, Instilling Religion in Greek and Turkish Nationalism, 60–62. 19. Erik Jan Zürcher, Modernleşen Türkiye’nin Tarihi (İstanbul: İletişim, 2012), 277. 20. Deniz Kandiyoti, “The Travails of the Secular: Puzzle and Paradox in Turkey,” Economy and Society 41, no. 4, (2012): 517. 21. Lewis, Modern Türkiye’nin Doğuşu, 563. 22. Grigoriadis, Instilling Religion in Greek and Turkish Nationalism, 68. 23. TBMM, Republican People’s Party, 7th Party Congress, retrieved from https:// www.tbmm.gov.tr/eyayin/GAZETELER/WEBKUTUPHANEDE%20BULUN AN%20DIJITAL%20KAYNAKLAR/KITAPLAR/SIYASI%20PARTI%20YAYIN LARI/197603391%20RPP%207%20NCI%20BUYUK%20KURULTAYI/ 197603391%20RPP%207%20NCI%20BUYUK%20KURULTAYI%200077_ 0138%20UCUNCU%20BIRLESIM.pdf, accessed September 24, 2018. 24. Hikmet Bila, RPP: 1919–1999 (Istanbul: Doğan Kitap,1999), 53. 25. Grigoriadis, Instilling Religion in Greek and Turkish Nationalism, 68. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. See Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London: Routledge, 1993). 29. Grigoriadis, Instilling Religion in Greek and Turkish Nationalism, 69. 30. Nilüfer Narlı, “Türkiye’de Laikliğin Konumu,” Cogito no. 1 (1994): 27. 31. Ibid., 28. 32. Narlı, Ibid.; Grigoriadis, Instilling Religion in Greek and Turkish Nationalism, 69–70. 33. Kandiyoti, “The Travails of the Secular,” 518. 34. Ibid., 519. 35. Grigoriadis, Instilling Religion in Greek and Turkish Nationalism, 70. 36. Kandiyoti, “The Travails of the Secular,” 520. 19_0073_Donmez.indb 135 3/28/19 5:16 AM 136 Edgar Şar 37. Edgar Şar and Alphan Telek, “Rethinking Secularism as a Political Principle in the Middle East: From Negative to Positive Perception of Secularism,” in Sources of Secularism: Enlightenment and Beyond, edited by Anna Tomaszevska and Hasse Hamalainen, 269 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 38. Kandiyoti, “The Travails of the Secular,” 521. 39. Şar and Telek, “Rethinking Secularism as a Political Principle in the Middle East.” 40. Kandiyoti, “The Travails of the Secular,” 524. 41. Grigoriadis, Instilling Religion in Greek and Turkish Nationalism, 78. 42. Kandiyoti, “The Travails of the Secular,” 515. 43. Somer, “Is Turkish Secularism Antireligious,” 585. 44. Yavuz, “Cleansing Islam from the Public Sphere.” 45. Nilüfer Göle, “Secularism and Islamism in Turkey: The Making of Elites and Counter-Elites,” Middle East Journal 51, no. 1, (1997): 46–58. 46. Kuru, Secularism and State Policies towards Religion, 173–77. 47. Kandiyoti, “The Travails of the Secular,” 516; Somer, “Is Turkish Secularism Antireligious,” 586. 48. Andrew Davison, “Turkey, a ‘Secular’ State? The Challenge of Description,” South Atlantic Quarterly 102, nos. 2–3, (2003): 340–41. 49. Somer, “Is Turkish Secularism Antireligious,” 587. 50. Ahmet T. Kuru and Alfred Stephan, “Introduction,” Democracy, Islam and Secularism in Turkey (Religion, Culture and Public Life), edited by Ahmet Kuru and Alfred Stephan, 6 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 51. Somer, “Is Turkish Secularism Antireligious.” 52. During the single-party era, namely from 1925, when Atatürk consolidated his power in the state, until 1946, the “control” aspect was apparently much more visible than the “instrumentalization.” After 1946, however, both instrumentalization and control became evident in state–religion–society relations and even during the 1960 and 1980 coups, when laiklik was “radically” defended, these relations remained intact. 53. Kandiyoti, “The Travails of the Secular,” 519. 54. Somer, “Is Turkish Secularism Antireligious,” 588. 55. Kandiyoti, “The Travails of the Secular,” 516–17. 56. Somer, “Is Turkish Secularism Antireligious,” 587. 57. Gérard Groc, “AKP, Türkiye’deki Laikliğin Derdi mi Dostu mu?” in Tartışılan Laiklik: Fransa ve Türkiye’de İlkeler ve Algılamalar, edited by Samim Akgönül, 43–44 (Istanbul: Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları, 2011). 58. Turkish Constitutional Court, Ruling No: 1998/1. 59. Yalçın Akdoğan, Muhafazakar Demokrasi (Ankara: AK Parti Yayınları, 2003), 100. 60. Ibid., 97. 61. Ibid., 95. 62. Groc, “AKP, Türkiye’deki Laikliğin Derdi mi Dostu mu?” 51. 63. Ahmet Kuru’s distinction between “assertive secularism” and “passive secularism” may also be of use to signify the mentioned divergence (2011). However, I 19_0073_Donmez.indb 136 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 137 do not prefer to use the concept based on this distinction due to two reasons. First, as I showed in the previous chapter, the history of laiklik in Turkey cannot be merely explained by two types of approaches. It is rather the dominant political landscape and actors’ interests that have been the driving force in the formation and pursuit of state policies. Second, in Kuru’s terms it is predominantly whether the state allows or bans religions to be publicly visible, what differentiates between passive and assertive secularism. In my comprehensive, political distinction, however, it is mainly equality and inclusion that makes two concepts different from one another, which I believe much more openly asserts the difference between two types of secularisms. 64. Şar and Telek, “Rethinking Secularism as a Political Principle in the Middle East,” 276. 65. Ibid. 66. Groc, “AKP, Türkiye’deki Laikliğin Derdi mi Dostu mu?” 45. 67. See Şar and Telek, “Rethinking Secularism as a Political Principle in the Middle East,” 276–77. 68. The question of whether a state is secular or not cannot usually be answered with a simple yes/no answer. Avoiding an in-depth theoretical discussion on what is secularism and assuming that it, one way or another, necessitates a sort of separation between religious affairs and those of state. A state with the totality of public institutions may display qualities that are secular and comprehensive, and this is, at any point in time, an empirical question that can be elucidated only through empirical analysis of various pivotal institutions and policies as well as broader ends under which they are formed. For an in-depth theoretical discussion on what is secularism, see Şar and Telek, “Rethinking Secularism as a Political Principle in the Middle East,” 247–53. 69. Rajeev Bhargava uses “three orders of connection” to distinguish between “secular states” and “religion-centered states,” each having its own distinct versions. In this regard, Bhargava also distinguishes between various types of secular states; namely, amoral and value-based secular states as well as states that are committed to “disconnection,” “one-sided exclusion,” or “principled distance” (2011, 96–99). Referring to the concept of principled distance, which is an integral element of contextual secularism, his favorite model of state–religion relations, Bhargava asserts that a secular state does not have to “make a fetish” of the third-order disconnection, which is to say that abiding by certain principles a secular state may connect itself with religion through some laws and policies (105). Nevertheless, I prefer to look at all three orders of connection in my analysis of desecularization of state in order to show that the connection between state and religion overreached the limits set by secularism as a political principle, also at the level of law and policies, which causes a dangerous regress in state’s capacity to take diversity as a fact. See Rajeev Bhargava, “Rehabilitating Secularism,” in Rethinking Secularism, edited by Craig Calhoun, Mark Juergensmeyer, and Jonathan Van Antwerpen, 96–105 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 70. See Akdoğan, Muhafazakar Demokrasi; AKP (2002). “2002 Genel Seçimleri Seçim Beyannamesi,” retrieved from http://www.JDParti.org.tr/upload/ documents/2002-beyanname.pdf, accessed September 24, 2018. 19_0073_Donmez.indb 137 3/28/19 5:16 AM 138 Edgar Şar 71. “İşte Erdoğan’ın Vizyon Belgesi,” July 15, 2014, CNNTurk, http://www. cnnturk.com/fotogaleri/turkiye/iste-erdoganin-vizyon-belgesi?page=1, accessed September 24, 2018. 72. Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (TMFA). (2013). “Dışişleri Bakanı Ahmet Davutoğlu’nun Diyarbakır Dicle Üniversitesi’nde Verdiği ‘Büyük Restorasyon: Kadimden Küreselleşmeye Yeni Siyaset Anlayışımız’ Konulu Konferans. 15 Mart 2013, Diyarbakır,” http://www.mfa.gov.tr/disisleri-bakani-ahmet-davutoglu_nun-diyarbakir-dicle-universitesinde-verdigi-_buyuk-restorasyon_-kadim_den-kuresellesmeyeyeni.tr.mfa, accessed September 24, 2018. Nebi Miş and Ali Aslan, “Erdoğan Siyaseti ve Kurucu Cumhurbaşkanı Vizyonu,” Seta Analiz no. 19, September 2014. 73. Şar and Telek, “Rethinking Secularism as a Political Principle in the Middle East,” 283. 74. “Babuşçu: Gelecek 10 yıl Liberaller Gibi Eski Paydaşlarımızın Arzuladığı Gibi Olmayacak,” T24, April 1, 2013, http://t24.com.tr/haber/babuscu-onumuzdeki10-yil-liberaller-gibi-eski-paydaslarimizin-kabullenecegi-gibi-olmayacak,226892, accessed September 24, 2018. 75. Ibid. 76. After what I earlier called “the collapse of laiklik,” secularism has never become again a daily matter of discussion like in the early 2000s, but it was discussed twice during the 2010–2016 period. First, in his “Arab Spring tour” in 2011, Prime Minister Erdoğan called on three uprising-hit Arab states—Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya—to adopt secular government, saying “a secular state is the one that treats all religious groups equally, including Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and atheist people.” See “Erdoğan Calls for a Secular Egypt,” Egypt Independent, September 13, 2011, retrieved from http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/erdogan-calls-secular-egypt, accessed September 24, 2018; and second, in 2016 the Speaker of Turkish Parliament, İsmail Kahraman, suggested the removal of secularism in the new Constitution, and Erdoğan disagreed with him, emphasizing the state’s equal distance from all religions, which is guaranteed by secularism. See “President Erdoğan Defends Secularism After Remarks by Parliament Speaker,” Hurriyet Daily News, May 11, 2016, retrieved from http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/president-erdogan-defendssecularism-after-remarks-by-parliament-speaker.aspx?pageID=238&nID=98392&N ewsCatID=338, accessed September 24, 2018. 77. “İşte Erdoğan’ın Vizyon Belgesi”, 15.07.2014, CNNTurk, Retrieved from http://www.cnnturk.com/fotogaleri/turkiye/iste-erdoganin-vizyon-belgesi?page=1 (accessed September 24, 2018) 78. Şar and Telek, “Rethinking Secularism as a Political Principle in the Middle East.” 79. See JDP, Ibid. 80. “İşte Erdoğan’ın Vizyon Belgesi,” CNNTurk, September 15, 2014, http:// www.cnnturk.com/fotogaleri/turkiye/iste-erdoganin-vizyon-belgesi?page=1, accessed September 24, 2018. 81. “Erdoğan Eğitimi Yeniden Inşa Etmekten, Radikal Adımlar Atmaktan Bahsetti,” Diken, March 26, 2016, http://www.diken.com.tr/erdogan-egitimde-radikalkararlar-atmaktan-bahsetti/, accessed September 24, 2018. 19_0073_Donmez.indb 138 3/28/19 5:16 AM Laiklik and Nation-Building 139 82. “Dindar Gençlik Yetiştireceğiz,” Diken, February 2, 2012, http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/dindar-genclik-yetistirecegiz-19825231; and “Erdoğan Hedefine Bağlılık Bildirdi: Dindar Nesil Yetiştireceğiz,” Diken, February 27, 2016, http://www.diken. com.tr/erdogan-sozunden-vazgecmedi-hedefimiz-dindar-nesil-yetistirmek/, accessed September 24, 2018. 83. “Erdoğan Eğitim Şurası’nda konuştu: Anaokulundan başlayarak yeni bir yaşam tarzı...”, 02.12.2014, Hurriyet, retrieved from http://www.hurriyet.com. tr/erdogan-egitim-s-rasinda-konustu-anaokulundan-baslayarak-yeni-bir-hayattarzi-27691352 and “Evlatlarımız değerlerimiz çerçevesinde hazırlanan çizgi filmleri izlemeli”, 19.06.2015, Posta, retrieved from http://www.posta.com.tr/siyaset/ HaberDetay/-Evlatlarimiz-degerlerimiz-cercevesinde-hazirlanan-cizgi-filmleri-izlemeli-.htm?ArticleID=287637, accessed September 24, 2018. 84. Ali Bardakoğlu, Religion and Society: New Perspectives from Turkey (Ankara: Publications of Presidency of Religious Affairs, 2006), 11. 85. Ali Bardakoğlu, “The Evasive Crescent: The Role of Religion in Politics,” in Turkish Policy Quarterly (İstanbul: ARI Movement, 2004), 368. 86. İştar Gözaydın, “Management of Religion in Turkey: The Diyanet and Beyond,” in Freedom of Religion and Belief in Turkey, edited by Özgür Heval Çınar and Mine Yıldırım, 13 (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). 87. Ibid. 88. Turkish Constitution Article Nr.136. 89. Nil Mutluer, “Yapısal, Sosyal ve Ekonomi Politik Yönleriyle Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı,” in Sosyo-Ekonomik Politikalar Bağlamında Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı: Kamuoyunun Diyanet’e Bakışı, Tartışmalar ve Öneriler (Istanbul: Helsinki Yurttaşlar Derneği, 2014), 3–5. 90. Ibid., 8, 64. 91. Şar and Telek, “Rethinking Secularism as a Political Principle in the Middle East,” 284. 92. 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Turkish Ministry of Health, “Hastanelerde Manevi Destek Sunmaya Yönelik İşbirliği Protokolü İmzalandı,” January 7, 2015, http://saglik.gov.tr/SaglikTurizmi/ belge/1-39351/hastanelerde-manevi-destek-sunmaya-yonelik-isbirligi-pr-.html, accessed September 24, 2018. 95. Turkish Ministry of Justice, “Adalet Bakanlığı ile Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı Arasında Tutuklu ve Hükümlülerin Dini ve Ahlaki Gelişimlerini Sağlamaya Yönelik Protokol,” February 10, 2011. 19_0073_Donmez.indb 139 3/28/19 5:16 AM 140 Edgar Şar 96. David Lepeska, “Turkey Casts the Diyanet,” Foreign Affairs, May 17, 2015, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/turkey/2015-05-17/turkey-casts-diyanet, accessed September 24, 2018. 97. Mutluer, “Yapısal, Sosyal ve Ekonomi Politik,” 8 98. Gözaydın, “Management of Religion in Turkey”; and Kadri Gürsel, “Yeni Türkiye’nin Kültür Emperyalizmi Aygıtı: Diyanet,” Al Monitor, March 11, 2015, March 11. 99. 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Education Reform Initiative, Eğitim İzleme Raporu 2014–15, 29–30. http://www.egitimreformugirisimi.org/sites/www.egitimreformugirisimi.org/files/ EIR2014_04.09.15.WEB.pdf, accessed September 24, 2018. 109. “Bakanlık Devre Dışı, Eğitimin Dümeni Dinci Vakıflarda,” Birgün, June 3, 2015. 110. See “Ensar Vakfı,”http://www.ensar.org/ensar-vakfi_W26.html; “Niçin ÖĞ-DER Şuurlu Öğretmenler Derneği,” http://www.ogder.org/tr/genel. asp?islem=incele&id=82; and “Hizmet Vakfı Tarihçesi,” http://www.hizmetvakfi. org/tarihce, all accessed September 24, 2018. 111. Maarif has an Arabic origin and means “education” in Ottoman-Turkish. 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