Turkish Studies, Vol. 6, No.

2, 145165, June 2005

Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today: Continuity, Rupture and Reconstruction in Operational Codes
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SERIF MARDN I

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanc University, Istanbul, Turkey

smardin@sabanciuniv.edu [Scedil]erifMardin 0 2 600000June 2005 Ltd Taylor and Print/1743-9663 2005 &Article Group Ltd online Original Francis 1468-3849 Francis Turkish Studies 10.1080/14683840500119478 FTUR111930.sgm

ABSTRACT The modernization of Turkey is usually covered as a process primarily generated after the foundation of the Turkish republic. This is a clearly simplistic image that neglects to bring in the continuities between the nineteenth-century Tanzimat reforms and the Republic itself. These continuities may even be traced to the earlier rise of a Turkish bureaucratic class (circa 1780). Another aspect of this simplification is that it neglects the type of institution building policy that goes back to the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II (r. 18761909) and the type of synthesis between Islam and modernity that was promoted by an intellectual elite between 1908 and 1923.

Only one that is like us and yet distinct from us, and that can coexist with us in the proximity of likeness and the distance of otherness can authenticate true otherness.1 The dramatic victory of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalknma Partisi, AKP) in the Turkish general elections of 2002 caused stupefaction that was most visible among the secular Turkish establishment. The fact that various surveys had predicted this outcome really brought home the shock. There had been precedents to the Islamization of governments since the 1970s, but the overwhelming superiority of the AKP in Parliament was new. The Welfare (Refah) Party, relying on support from conservative, but essentially secular, parties had been in power for a time in 199697.2 It was forced out by the restrained but, in the end, effective influence of the Turkish armed forces. Altogether, the political situation created by the success of the AKP was unprecedented. An interesting aspect of the period following this victory was the dearth of studies investigating in depth the Islamic component in the life of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the new prime minister, a former torch bearer of Islam.
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Correspondence Address: Serif Mardin, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Sabanc University, OrhanlTuzla, 34956 Istanbul, Turkey. Email: mardin@ihlas.net.tr
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No serious study of the role of Islam in the prime ministers career emerged from academic circles. His effortless hobnobbing with American presidents and Eurocrats between 2002 and 2003 may have, by contrast with his intellectual origins, highlighted an unexpected cosmopolitanism that became the only focus of speculation. Yet, at this very juncture, the fierce debate as to whether Islam was an organic component of Turkish culture, a combat between laics and Islamists, continued unabated. This age-old controversy was almost detached from issues relating to AKP success. Fears about creeping political Islam, as usual, occupied much space in the media. What was missing was curiosity about the long-range influence of an Islamic voice in Turkey, one product of which certainly was Erdogan himself. For social scientistsboth Turkish and foreignthe issue was one of finding a foundation of laic legitimation for Turkeys modernity rather than attempting to understand the AKP phenomenon. Among Islamists, on the other hand, the obverse of the laic position prevailed, namely that what had happened was an aspect of reintegration of Islam into Turkish society as part of a trend towards greater cultural authenticity.3 For both groups, Durkheim, Weber, Wuthnow, Berger and Luckmann were good for Western religion but irrelevant for Turkish Muslims.4 This stand was also a denial of the world-over revitalization of religion in modern times about which so much had been written.5 What we still need today is a reconstitution of the process that has led to the emergence of the AKP. This reconstitution requires a dialectical approach in which a number of opposites are recuperated in a historical setting.6 One theme developed here, for instance, is that in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the discourse of increasingly powerful Ottoman bureaucracy already carried aspects of a type of positivism long before the mid-nineteenth-century reforms of the Tanzimat,7 and that Islamboth with regard to its institutions and ideologyhad only had scattered moments of hegemony in the history of the Ottoman Empire. The ubiquity of a peculiar mix of state and religious discourse in the Ottoman Empire promoted a modern Turkish Islamic exceptionalism with distant Ottoman roots. It is the concentration of Islamic studies on the Islam of Arabs8 that has hidden this character of Ottoman religious structure, a character that antedates and adumbrates the secularism of the Turkish Republic. Two levels of the theme of exceptionalism are developed here: first, that of Ottoman tacit, deeply embedded, shared background understandings.9 The main point, that secular as well as religious elites shared a space provided by the state in the Ottoman Empire, becomes much more compelling when one introduces the tacit aspect of the sharing, as discussed by Charles Taylor. In the present case, the supporting tacit element is the semi-ontological status of the collective good as a hypergood in Islam.10 The general argument has been made by Patricia Crone,11 the more specific treatment for the Ottoman Empire is found in a brilliant article by Tahsin Grgn.12 Both works show that in Islam, political and social structures do
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Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today 147 not operate on a foundation of religiosity, but are considered to be made of the same stuff. This mode of thinking has been replaced in contemporary Islam by a postCartesian idea of religion and society as distinct but organically connected levels of organization, a modern way of posing the problem. There was, then, a foundation of Islamic legitimation for collective organization, the form of which has been forgotten or, at least, neglected in our times. Such a foundation would allow a prior, sophisticated culture of political organization to go on to make political organization the fulcrum of a society. The pre-Ottomans did have that sophisticated political culture and they used what amounted to an Islamic dispensation to focus on the politicalone may say with only a slight exaggerationat the expense of religion in a way that was not anticipated by the original Islamic theory. These two elements are the tacit facets of Ottoman socio-political organization. A second theme in this essay, linked to these organizational precedents, is that of Ottoman reform and bureaucratic practice in the nineteenth century as well as its transformation in the late nineteenth century.13 The developments regarding Islam in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire covered here only partly overlap with the clash of Ijtihad and Taklid,14 a foundational framework of studies of Islamic modernization. In the case of Turkey we should concentrate, rather, on specific developments linked to the organizational novelty and proselytizing work of the Mujaddidi-Naksibendi religious order.15 Two points should emerge from this essay. First, that in the Ottoman Empire the process of learning on the road to modernization was more than simply an accumulation of facts and comprises the carving of a new qualitative sphere, i.e., that of the legitimation of knowledge produced in the Western post-Cartesian style. Second, that there exists an autonomous line of development of the Naksibendi Sufi order that takes it into that new cognitive sphere and from there into politics. Finally, another main argument of this essay is that the somewhat diffuse story about multiple modernities conceals the necessary attention one should accord to specific historical developments. The term operational code, which appears in the title to the essay, goes back to Nathan Leites book on The Operational Code of the Politbureau.16 It refers to a specific type of praxis, of dealing with social reality.17 The praxis of Ottoman bureaucrats, which, typically, focused on institution building, ultimately led to the Turkish Republic. The continuity of this praxis was ruptured by that of the Naksibendi Sufi orders, which like all Islamic brotherhoods, used network organiz ing for their praxis.18 As for reconstruction, each of these codes changed with time, eventually converging toward the field of politics. Exceptionalism is the way in which this very special dialectic has marked Islam in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. In the most general sense this means that the Ottomans as well as the modern Turks shared the feeling that after all was said and done, despite skirmishes and rebellions against the state, they possessed a state; that the state was a life-form through which channels all authorities, whether secular or religious, operated to achievement and success. That sharing, however, did not mean that a variety of practices could not develop.
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Turkish-Islamic Exceptionalism In the contemporary literature on Islam and modernity the primaryand in fact overwhelmingvoice is that of a concentration on Arab or Salafi Islam. Aziz alAzmehs Islams and Modernities, an example of an informed, philosophically declamatory and sociologically aware prototype of the genre, is, despite its pluralist title, primarily a comment on Arab Islam. This selectiveness, which can only be described as sectarianism, does not take into accountpace Indonesia, Pakistan and the Balkansthe case of Ottoman and modern Turkish Islam. Possibly, at the time Islams and Modernities was written, Islam in Turkey did not hold out the prospect of an investigation that did not fit ready-made categories.19 Yet it is exactly this particular sui generis aspect of Turkish Islam that today seems in need of an explanation. This essay will categorize this contrary20 and non-conformist aspect of Turkish Islam as that of Turkish exceptionalism, using this adjective by example of a book by Seymour Martin Lipset, on American exceptionalism. What Lipset was underlining were those features of American society that had given it a special send-off in history, a country that had developed without the feudal baggage that had persistently stuck to West European modern history. This was, of course, an insight Lipset owed to Alexis de Tocqueville, the premier political sociologist of the transition to modernity.21 The point made in this essay is that the specifics of Turkish history have endowed the Ottomans and the Turkish Republic with characteristics that have worked cumulatively to create a special setting for Islam, a setting where secularism and Islam interpenetrate, which of course is quite different from saying that Islam and secularism have fused. This interpenetration or overlap is the real methodological obstacle that faces the investigator of Islamic modernism in Turkey. It establishes a field for study that shows much greater complexity than the research based on the essentialism of Islam, the core of contemporary studies of political Islam in Turkey and elsewhere.22 This essay has attempted to overcome this obstacleat least partlyby basing itself on a specific study of social movements by Eyerman and Jamison, who concentrate on social movements as cognitive practice.23 The three social forces that enter this narrative are the discourse of the Ottoman and Turkish state officials, the rise of the Mujaddidi-Khalidi Naksibendi order and the voice of Ottoman and Turkish intellectuals trying to extract a meaning from Islam in an attempt to synchronize it with the European intellectual construction known as civilization.24 As to the Arab Islam already mentioned as a foil to Ottoman, it is not a linguistic-religious category, but rather an extrinsic presence of Turkish history. First, in the sense of the condescension of the Ottoman bureaucratic center towards Arabs as Bedouins (bedev); second, in the suspicion of the Young Turks that Arabs were seceding from the Ottoman Empire; and third, through the promotion of a dolchstosslegende (stab-in-the-back legend) of the betrayal of the Arabs during the First World War. This assiduously promoted Republican theme was found in all instructional texts on the history of the Turkish Republic; works in Arabic were found to ignore the specificity of Ottoman-Turkish-Islam. Today, in Turkey, the classical
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Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today 149 texts of Islam are increasingly being retrieved, while writings by Arabs, on the other hand, served as short-lived sources of inspiration. Sayyid Kutub or Said Hawa were influential in the 1960s and in the late 1970s. The writings of these two Muslim revivalists, written in Arabic, were translated into Turkish but, as will appear in the following pages, they were overtaken by the local productions of Nak sibendis.
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The Political Discourse of Ottoman Elites There has now accumulated considerable information about the Ottoman political elite.25 Halil nalck was the first to indicate that while the Doctors of Islamic I Law (ulema) had a central role to play in the Ottoman Empire, there existed a rivalry that set the ulema against the carriers of the Ottoman political discourse formed in the Palace and the scribal class established in bureaus of the Ottoman administration.26 This rivalry was in fact the rivalry of two discourses: one clearly targeted to the preservation of the Ottoman state and the second aimed at keeping a state of equilibrium in the complex social structure of the Empire, giving its due both to individuals and to the Ottoman equivalent of established social institution. Although there existed an overlap between these discourses there also could be distinguished a dividing line separating the discourse of the bureaucracymore secularand that of the ulemamore religious. An early example of the secularity of the bureaucratic discourse may be found in the work of the seventeenthcentury polymath Ktip elebi. Both his organicist theories of the state and his adoption of the Khaldunian view of the rise and demise of states differ from the argumentation of the earlier, more moralistic classical discourse of Knalzde that has a more clearly Islamic foundation.27 Ktip elebis indictment of the nefarious effects of the religious strife of his time as well as his critique of Ottoman Islamic religious education place him in a special locus even within the discourse of Ottoman scribal personnel. While we do not know whether this seventeenth-century Ottoman critique was a harbinger of more general secularist trends, it is quite clear that the eighteenth century brought about a number of cumulative changes that promoted the secularist aspect of the discourse of Ottoman bureaucracy. One of these changes was the creation of a new bureau (Amed Odas) through which flowed all communication with Western states.28 The employees of this bureau were now increasingly exposed to information about the major European states. Antedating this change already in the 1730s there had been an increase in the number of bureaucrats who were sent to various European capitals to observe Western ways. An innovation of the same years was the practice of these envoys to write reports about their missions upon their return. What is striking about these reports is the materiality of their content. The reports did not contrast the religious or political institutions they found in the West with their Ottoman equivalents, but focused on the material elements of life. They detailed technological advances such as the construction of stone buildings, both military and civilian, and they described the splendor of Versailles, its organization of leisure activities
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and in particular the theatre. The precision of the tables of astronomical observatories also impressed them. In the case of 28 elebi Mehmed Efendi, the envoy to France in 1720: What he evokesprincipallyand with what astonishment and wonder are the achievements [of] science and technology and those of the different arts But his curiosity and interest also cover natural phenomena and animal species: the tides or the early bloom of hyacinths and violets in Bordeaux plants of the Jardin de Roi unknown in Turkey, the animals of the new world he discovers in the menagerie in Chantilly.29 The most interesting part of his report, however, is Mehmet elebis summarizing of his experiences, i.e., the hadis to the effect that the world is the prison of the believer and the paradise of the infidel. This, of course, is pure irony and opens another window on the discourse of the Ottoman bureaucrats. An aspect of the Ottoman bureaucratic style in harmony with this bureaucratic irony is the strong influences in Ottoman state bureaus of Persian culture and its classics, an anathema to the more Orthodox ulema. No Doctor of Islamic Law was chosen for these foreign missions, even though the bureaucrats that were selected had the same disadvantages of the ulema of not knowing the languages of the countries in which they were on mission. Such personnel did however emerge increasingly from the Amed Bureau with time. A most extraordinary example of the emphasis on materiality is the report on Austria of Ebubekir Ratip Efendi.30 During the 227 days he spent in Austria in 179293 Ebubekir Ratip Efendi was able to compile an extraordinarily detailed description of the military, financial and economic organization of that country. Only in one instance does one encounter a statement about religions in the entire report,31 and that relates to Islam being a better mobilizer of the military than the West. In short, the reports of the envoys had a positivistic flavor, which recreated another shared tacit element, that of the bureaucrats discourse. No wonder, then, that the foundation of the nineteenth-century reform movement known as the Tanzimat was modeled on the theories of the Austro-German Cameralists, those reformers of state structures whose view adumbrated the later positivists and Saint-Simonians. The entire reform movement of the Tanzimat was based on the positivistic view of the social engineer.32 In the 1790s, a doorway into that worldview had been the similarly positivistic cast of military education.33 The prevailing conceptual set of the bureaucrats was taken over by the main architects of the Tanzimat, headed by the Grand Vizier Mustafa Resid Pasa (180058).34 In the succeeding generation (the 1860s), we see the members of the first Constitutionalist-Liberal movement, the Young Ottomans, promoting a new version of the bureaucratic style, although with a new twist: they offered a constitutional project albeit with an Islamic foundation. The reason for this innovation is clear: already there had been protests on the part of groups of Muslims against the privileges
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Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today 151 granted European powers in the Empire in 1856.35 Signs appeared of a new ideological-religious threshold: in 1859 a conspiracy by members of the Nak sibendi broth erhood aiming to assassinate the Sultan was uncovered (Kuleli Vakas, the Kuleli Incident).36 Nak sibendis did collaborate with the Young Ottomans in the sense of using the Friday prayers in mosques to promote constitutional reform. However, this collaboration was tainted by the Naksibendis dislike of and resentment against the reform policy of the Tanzimat, hostility that was expressed at great length by Saryerli Seyh Sadk Efendi in his Tanzir-i Telemak.37 While the Young Ottomans were wary of discussing religious themes, an important development took place within the Ottoman religious worldview in their time, namely the capture by private individuals of discussions about religion, to that date only a legitimate field for the ulema. This new area of discussion was introduced by Ali Suavi, an extraordinary character who, though a graduate of the secular, state-sponsored Middle School of the Tanzimat, fabricated a religious personality for himself. While Suavi was dismissed by the Young Ottomans as a charlatan,38 the new private voice of Islam, sometimes loud and sometimes more measured, was from now on a theme equally shared by secular and religious intellectuals. Members of a new intelligentsiamost of whom were no longer educated in religious seminars (medrese), but in the schools established as part of the reforms of the Tanzimatbegan to discuss Islam as a fundamental social issue. This new venue first appeared in the 1870s. The aim, at this juncture, was the mobilization of Muslims in order to construct a new Islamic unity; the solidarity thus gained was to be used against imperialism. Later, in the 1890s, part of the intelligentsia promoted arguments that would allow Islam to be seen as the locus of progress and civilization. What is quite clear here is the overlap between the earlier discourse of the bureaucrats and this new utilitarian use of Islam. In the 1870s we still find Mnif Pa sa, the premier organizer of knowledge in the Western mode of the Tanzimat, speaking of the elimination of religious fanaticism through the spread of science. Selim Deringil has shown how the state-centered, manipulative use of Islam (diluted by elements of superstitious fears) was the real foundation of the Islamic conservation of Sultan Abdlhamid II.39 A doctoral dissertation from 2003 has also indicated how the Ottoman intellectualsat first in the 1890s but more clearly after the Young Turks revolution of 1908 were bowled over by the materialism of Bchner and Moleschott, the two best-known leaders of nineteenth-century German materialism. The only limit to the Turks admiration seems to have been the potential of materialism to damage the state.40 This transformation of the positivist element in the bureaucratic discourse appears once more in the positivist worldview of the leaders of the opposition to Sultan Abdlhamid in exile.41 No wonder then that it later also shows in the policies of the Young Turks in power.42 The echo among religious circles of the theories of Bchner and Moleschott may be followed at two levels: first with regard to the slow but persistent penetration into the provinces of the media as instruments of communication. Second, in the continued interest in technology shown in the Hamidian era both by the Sultan and by the
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Ottoman press. A third, less visible but as important level was the shifting of discussions of the creative power of the divinity from the description of the infinite variety of Gods creative powers to that of the autonomy of forces of nature directed by God. In another work an attempt was made to show how a Naksibendi, raised in the religious seminaries of North Eastern Turkey, availed himself of that shift of focus to make it an element of his Islamic voice.43 The latest versions of what I have called here the private capture of discussions about Islam were still a central discourse in the first years of the twentieth century, the poet Mehmet Akif (18731936) being one of its most prominent spokesmen.44 Mehmet Akif is the archetypal agent of the stage Turkish exceptionalism had reached at that time: he projected the voice of an Islamic reformer, he was an Ottoman patriot, he sat as a representative in the Republics Grand National Assembly, and he was the author of the Republics anthem. In the meantime, one relatively silent movement, that of the Nak sibendis, had been gaining ground since the first decades of the nineteenth century. The media of the Republican era has identified at least two Nak sibendi-led move ments that emerged in the early twentieth century. One, the privates rebellion of April 1909, eventually leading to Sultan Abdlhamids abdication, and the second, the revolt of Sheikh Said in 1925. In the extant literature, the description of these two movements spotlights their fanaticism, treachery and reactionary qualities. But this narrative dismisses the strength and vigorousness of the growth of Nak sibendism, an extraordinarily resilient revivalist movement that has to be stud ied in greater historical detail to feature its importance in Turkey.45 All of the successful elements of modern Turkish Islamic politics have originated in later branchings of that group.
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Nak sibsendis
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In the seventeenth century in India the potential for an Islamic resistance against the state was rediscovered by an lim (Doctor of Islamic Law), Ahmed al-Sirhindi (d.1624), who went on to reorganize the Naksibendi order for this very purpose. There is more here than a simple conflict of power in the sense that for him din, religion, was not just an ontological position, a metaphysical theory and a critical guideline, but in addition, revitalized Islam was an organizational means to stop its infiltration by creedal formulations of Hinduism, a policy he felt was encouraged by the Mogul ruler Akbar.46 Sirhindi died in 1624 and by the early 1800s his mobilizing stance had been brought to the Kurdish region of Central, North East and South East Anatolia.47 Here it achieved immense success, possibly because it established the foundation of Islamic civility in a mountainous region where organized Islam had not been able to penetrate. In addition, the leader of this movement, Shaikh or Mevlan Halid Bagdadi (17771826), was a brilliant organizer. As result, the area of Nak sibendi influence was enormously widened in Anatolia in the nineteenth century.48 No attempt is made to reach for links between this revivalist Mujaddidi-Khalidi Nak sibendism and the wider revivalism in the Islamic world of a reformist
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Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today 153 movement that has been named neo-Sufi.49 The discussion is ongoing and a considerable amount of material has been produced, but appears to have been ignored by Turkish social scientists.50 Nevertheless, specific studies of the Naksibendi move ment show its vast extension, and its extraordinary proselytizing zeal. Hamid Algars description is the most apposite:
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When taking leave of [his Pr] Shah Gulm Ali Dihlev, Mevlan Halid informed him that his supreme aim was to seek this world for the sake of religion he therefore elaborated a veritable politics of guidance (siyasat al-irshad) which led him to construct a network of no fewer than 116 khalifas, each with a carefully delineated area of responsibility, and in the case of some prominent recruits to relax the devotional discipline customarily imposed on mrds. The sole novelty that Mevlan Halid contributed to the devotional life of the Naksibendi orderan unprecedented emphasis on the practice of rbita (the establishing of an imaginary link with the Shaykh) and an insistence on confining it to himselfhad a political aspect: that of unifying the Hlid-Naqshbandi order as a centralized, disciplined organization The ambiguous relations between the Ottoman authorities and Mevlan Halid, their would-be savior and guide on the path to rectitude, were most apparent in Istanbul. Mevlan Halids first representative in the Ottoman capital aroused hostility because of his attempts to exclude noninitiates from a public mosque during the performance of Hlid rituals. His replacement, Abdlvahhb es-Ss, played a more constructive role and recruited into the Hlid Naqshbandi order Mekkizade Mustafa sm, I several times Seyhlislam; Keecizade zzet Molla, qadi of Istanbul; and members of the bureaucracy including Grc Necip Pasa and Musa Safveti Pasa. Precisely this swift expansion of the order led to anxiety on the part of Sultan Mahmud II, resulting in a series of expulsions of prominent Hlids from Istanbul; the most comprehensive of these came in April 1828 when all Hlids were banished and a ban was placed on the naming of any new Hlid representative to the city. Hlid influence was nonetheless strong in the upper echelons of the bureaucracy during most of the reign of Mahmud II and it may have helped to create a favorable climate for the abolition of the Janissaries and the proscription of the Bekta si order. In the early 1830s Sultan Mahmud became better disposed to the Hlids and in 1833 he reappointed Mekkizde (sic) Asm Efendi to the office of Seyhlislam, which he continued to hold in the reign of Sultan Abdlmecid.51
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During the nineteenth century, all of Anatolia began to be crisscrossed by Nak sibendi networks.52 The increasing penetration of Sufi orders in this area amounted to the implantation of elements of an Islamic civility at a time when the Ottoman Empire had been unable to intervene in inter-tribal conflict and the ensuing anarchy.53 The Nak sibendi leaders also assumed roles of political leadership in this region.54
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A New Sphere for the Bureaucracy By the 1890s, the structure of the Tanzimat was itself in the process of changing. The ideological cast of the secular discourse of the bureaucracy had been transformed by its aim, i.e., establishing constituted bodies now regulated by a new Westerninspired administrative law.55 Among these could be counted local representative institution, municipal government, state-sponsored semi-autonomous bodies such as savings trusts and the presence in the provinces of state banks, state educational institutions and institutions regulating public health.56 In this perspective, the discourse of the reformers may be reinterpreted as now consisting of a new operational code, i.e., that of the formation of constituted bodies under a system of administrative secular law. Already in the 1880s, the increasing professionalization, i.e., Western institution-building activities, opened up a new phase in the secularism of the old bureaucratic class. More than a specific discourse, what now defined the groupness of the bureaucrat was his role and the public space carved by those activities. The existing literature indicates that this system had become one of the organizational features of provincial life in the Ottoman Empire by 1900 and that it even percolated into everyday life in the Ottoman provinces, and changed it.57 This presence and modernization of the province is certified by the ways in which the provincial setting of Anatolia contributed to the organization of the Turkish resistance to the invasion of Anatolia after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War.58 The situation faced by the new Turkish Republic (est. 1923) was that of a triple challenge: the desire of the provincial notables (or esraf) and tribal leaders overlapping with crypto-religious brotherhoods of all descriptionsto take part in governing, the anti-secularism of the religiously motivated Naksibendi of Anato lia, and the ongoing voice of reformist Islam. The interrelation of these forces gives us a better picture of the reality of those times than the simplified categorization of much of modern Turkish history, whether by Turkish or foreign authors.59 Although it had some overlap with the provincial esraf, the Naksibendi operated with their own organizational principle, that of the network. The Republican regime stifled the development of both of these social-structural components of Anatolia. However, it also promoted their change. Between 1930 and 1980, the need to work in the everyday and to synchronize ones approach with the framework of the administrative and economic institution of the Republic (all of which had a tacit background of positivist rationality), introduced the Nak sibendi and other Islamic conservatives still working through networks to a new world. Here, instrumental reason was beginning to acquire a new role. Of necessity the use of instrumental reason had to follow the contours of the latent rationality of Republican institutions and was used for personal benefit. The use of the strongly secular educational institutions of the Republic is a prime example here. But this process worked in two directions. The process of adaptation had gradually changed the cognitive frame of the conservatives. At the same time, both the Nak sibendi and Islamic conservatives of all descriptions were introduced into market relations
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Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today 155 that promoted economic-rationalistic strategies. The rise of market relations led to new structural, class-like developments: the bazari (esnaf) became a businessman. Later, this group was to be part of the creation of an Anatolian business class that began to show its influence in the 1970s. Necmettin Erbakan, the founder of the first successful Islamist party, was one person to profit from this development.60 Another variant of the transformation of Naksibendi discourse in the 1940s to the 1960s was its encounter with Turkish nationalist ideology through the influence of Seyh Abdlaziz Bekkine on the eminent Turkish nation alist Nurettin Topu. A later development that showed the gradual integration of the Nak sibendi into modernity was their embracement of one of the two most prominent modernist Turkish poets of the Republican era, Necip Fazl Ksakrek. From the 1940s, both in his periodical (The Great East) and conferences that took him to provincial centers, he promoted a renewalist Islam that was primarily a defense of a cultural tradition. Here the line between Islam and nationalism became vague and could, therefore, attract a new generation raised in the Republican nationalist tradition. All of this happened in a much more diffuse way than an explanation brought here can show but in the most general sense what has been described was the core of a learning process. Using the media and entering politics were other components that changed operational strategies throughout Turkey from the 1980s onward. The influence of the moral culture of Islam, its voice, was still around as an autonomous force given the lackluster ethical message of the Republic. The creation of political parties in the 1940s liberated energies in the first of the two operational fields described, namely, that of persons with some skill in the promotion of constituted bodies. Offices in local representative institutions, members of the provincial elite with responsibilities in the single party of the Republic at the local level, officials of municipal government of the same origin, the personnel of state banks, lawyers, physicians and educators in the state educational system were drawn into this area. In the 1960s, the two organizational principles of network organizing and institution building were beginning to overlap, but persons with knowledge of regulation still had an advantage over those able to mobilize fellow Muslims, friends and relatives. A characteristic feature of this process of social change was that it involved a process of learning. As shown, between 1910 and 2000 the Naksibendis had been gradually learning and changing their operational code.61 This was not simply a random occurrence; its motive force was that Turkey had entered the era of knowledge legitimated on the model of the Republican ideology. Its keynote was a type of knowledge elaborated in the West, i.e., empiricism, rationalism and science. That was an important step in establishing the legitimation of a new cognitive field, a much different statement than the usual praise for the mobilization of education by the Turkish Republic. It is the new general system of knowledge and its osmotic influence on new generations that, in the long run, changed the cognitive element in the worldview and the practice of Islamic conservatives of all persuasions in Turkey.
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The Voice, the Folk and the Media The process of de-linking the discourse of Islamic theology from the ulema was a fundamental change in Ottoman Islam; it was also replicated in the Islamic world at large. But in the case of Turkey the contextual frame of this new Islamic discourse (the shared state ideology) propelled it into areas that only faintly appear in Pakistan, Egypt or Indonesia. A weakness of the Ottoman-Islamic revivalist voice, prominent between 1890 and 1908, was its elite characteristic. A parallel feature of the social structure of the Ottoman Empire that preceded this elitist cast had been the gap between the lowerlevel, badly-remunerated prayer leaders in mosques and the ulema. Consequently, the lower-level clerics had often been leaders of rebellions addressing social grievances, and this was replicated in the Naksibendi conspiracy of 1859. Sultan Abdlhamids policy, by fostering a sense of citizenship among his subjects, had also provided a potentially activist ethic to a number of his subjects. The consequences of what amounted to significant social perturbation were not, however, anticipated by the ruler. The lower class ulema, the Turkish natives, were becoming restive, and began to turn up in new settings such as the one large-scale permanent organization of his time that was the product of the Hamidian reform, the modernized Ottoman army. This structural change of Hamidian society may be one explanation of the rebellion of enlisted men and non-commissioned officers of April 13, 1909 that ended with the deposition of the Sultan. The rebels had demanded a return to the rule of Islamic Law but were overcome by the Young Turks officers and their special forces. The Young Turks loudly proclaimed ideas about freedom and equality in the days following their advent to power undoubtedly also played a role in the inception of this new populist Islamic voice. The problems of integrating this new audience with the ongoing discussion of the role of Islam in the modern world that had been the contribution of an intellectual elite was thus becoming a practical as well as a moral issue. Mehmet Akif was one of the persons who repeatedly addressed this problem of the simultaneous link with modernity and the beliefs of the folk. Between 1908 and the defeat of Turkey at the end of the First World War a new type of media with a populist Islamic appeal had emerged. The journal Volkan, the mouthpiece for the rebels of 1909, exemplified this trend, which was nipped in the bud by the Young Turks. One man, Said Nursi, whose relation with the Young Turks was somewhat uneven, however, could continue to write. Superficially read, his message was obscure and recondite. In fact, his work was an attempt to come to terms with both Western materialism and an emerging Turkish nationalism. It also was a reaffirmation of the moral imperatives of Islam and a message for the folk. Said Nursi had been trained in the hub of the Nak sibendi influence in Anatolia, the province of Bitlis. However, the themes he promoted transcended these origins. He took a deliberate look at the forces of modernity and, at the same time, attempted to keep the essentials of Mujaddidi teachings alive. The persecutions he suffered
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Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today 157 during the republican era did not prevent him from extending his influence from his place of exile to the whole of Turkey. Clandestinely distributed, handwritten and polycopied letters brought together a large audience; these were the Nurcus, the bte noire of laic republicans. In the 1930s, the Republics image of the shiftless, backward Muslim other must have promoted the influence of Saids message that affirmed Islam as a civilizational element but also provided a frame for the elaboration of a religious-ethical universe for the folk. In the 1950s and 1960s, these and similar materials began to be widely propagated and very gradually became intertwined with themes about the cultural identity of Turks that had been promoted by poets such as Necip Fazl and nationalists influenced by the Nak sibendi such as Nurettin Topu. The Islamic discourse that emerged with the general explosion of media in Turkey from the 1950s and 1960s now reached a general public that did not exist in the 1920s.62 The gap between elite and folk had finally, one could argue, been successfully closed by a new media discourse in which there were mixed echoes of the various stages of the Islamic voice. It is this communication climate that helped the rise of Turkish Islamic political parties from the 1970s onward. Television was, of course, an extension of the means available for the propagation of the Islamic voice. But parallel developments had also taken place in the Nak sibendi universe itself.
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Later Naksibendis
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The Naksibendi lineage that takes us to Recep Tayyip Erdogan begins with a student of Mevlan Halid Bagdadi, Ziyaeddin Gm shanev (1895). One of his disciples, Mehmed Zahid Kotku (1980),63 seems, once more, to have been instrumental in changing the cognitive style of the Naksibendi traditions he had taken over during his years as a prayer leader in various mosques, a state-bureaucratic position in Turkey. In the Turkey of the 1960s, when the voice of Islam was beginning to link with world representatives of a revival of Islam such as Sayyid Kutub and Said Hawa, a somewhat different process was also at work: the Naksibendi became influential in the Turkish civil sphere. A group of Turkish university students had gathered around Kotku.64 These young men had been won over by technology, which for them represented the core of modernization and Western power. They had acquired influence in the State Planning Organization due to their links with and the increasing prominence of Turgut zal, then Head of the State Planning Organization (SPO), and later Prime Minister. Kotku took a personal interest in economic, political and cultural issues and encouraged his followers to do the same. We know today that the first prominent Islamic party in Turkey, the National Order Party (Milli Nizam Partisi, MNP) (197071), and the National Salvation Party (Mill Selamet Partisi, MSP) (197281) were established through his promotion and support; we also know that he supervised their activities.65 Here, nationalism, a primary motto of the secular Turkish Republic, promoted as it was by the National Order Party, was not an obstacle but a shared
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feeling of pridefirst Ottoman then Turkishthat had been building since Abdlhamid II. Kotku did not see the state as an absolute enemy and, in that sense, did not hold much esteem for more radical Islamists in the Islamic world. To this attitude was added what one author has described as mystical environmentalism.66 Professor Necmettin Erbakan, the founder of the three Islamic parties that attempted to keep abreast of dissolution by court decrees, the National Order (est. 1970), National Salvation (est. 1972) and Welfare (Refah) Party (198398), entered Kotkus circle. The relation between the two men is not entirely clear. At any rate Erbakan was influenced by Kotkus recommendation to establish control over the world of media and industry as well as politics. His underlining of a national interest in the background of Islamic values is one of the truly Turkish elements that followed his rise to powera plus in a setting in which he had to compete with extreme nationalists. An explanation of Mehmed Zahid Kotkus transformation of the Nak sibendi tradition could be the following: Kotku had created a new version of the operational code of the Nak sibendi, synchronized with the political code promoted by the Republic, that of constitutional legitimacy. The most interesting part of this change is that by the 1970s Kotku probably had come to the conclusion that this particular political operational code had developed sufficiently deep roots in Turkey for Nak sibendis to promote a second layer of legitimacy. This layer, working in tandem with Islamic legitimacy, was that of politically grounded institution building. This was a development showing greater originality and adaptability than the theme of Ottoman-Turkish Islamic authenticity that had been around since the defeat of Russia by Japan in 1905. It, no doubt, was an aspect of a positive view of the state as an institution, also part of the Naksibendi tradition from Mevlan Halid to Bedizzaman Said Nursi. This time, the positivistic support of the state came as a gift from the secular Turkish Republic. When Turgut zal, with his degree in Engineering, came to power in 1983 with the victory of his liberal Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi, ANAP), the link between his Nak sibendi supporters, technological knowledge as encouraged by the secular Kemalist Republic and democratic politics had been brought together into the civil, public sphere that was the very creation of the Republic. Here the civic aspect of this new construction was the tacit, shared element of an alliance that could no longer be described as clearly Islamic. Other developments shaping this new Islamic location of the hypergood followed. During the 1991 electoral campaign, Erbakans increasing emphasis on the political process as such, i.e., his immersion into a new discourse, appeared in television presentations where he appealed to everyday people and avoided a readily recognizable Islamic idiom, symbols and Koranic quotations.67 This shift to populism was an anticipation of the much-expanded political persona of Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Organi zationally, however, Erbakan was still lagging in the formation of a mass party.68 When Kotku, after his death (1980), was succeeded by his son-in-law, Professor Esat Cosan, the latter had the accusation of excessive politicization ready to be hurled against Erbakan. It is true that even though Cosan was also changing his
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Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today 159 operational code or styleonce again with inputs of civil societyhe had been doing it somewhat differently than Erbakan. In 1983, Cosan began publishing a periodical, Islam, which took up the discussion of the appropriate strategy for Turkish Muslims but also promoted a more general ideological line emphasizing the strength of Islam as a culture. Islam was followed by three more periodicals, Science and Art, Women and the Family and the Roseflower Child. All these publications were targeting issues that were, indeed, aspects of the current discussions in Turkey and had titles that were strikingly modern. In other words, while Erbakan was busy with politics, the Nak sibendi operational code had been made redundant and, in a way, replaced by a discourse modeled on current discussions taking place in civil society. This discourse soon began to displace the more radical expostulation of the Islamist magazines of the 1970s. At least one memoir covering the 1980s indicates that the Iranian Islamic revolution played an important role in changes of attitude among Turkish Islamists of the time. Abandoning the pro-Iranian position appears to have been the result of judging the Iranian regime by criteria that these Turkish appraisers did not realize they held. These were the criteria of citizenship and civil society that were part of the values promoted by a discourse prominent in the schoolbooks of the single party era (192346).69
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Enter Recep Tayyip Erdo gan

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Recep Tayyip Erdogan began his political career early as a successful organizer for the youth movements of the National Salvation Party. His links with the party were reinforced by his allegiance to Kotkus circle and to his successor, Kotkus son-in-law Esat Cosan. His Islamist credentials were clear, but his early fiery speeches, when carefully studied, reveal a foundation of activism that seems to have transcended the specifically Islamist content of his message as a youth organizer. One of his speeches of 1980, for instance, seems an anticipation of his later persona: Our mission is not one of simple-minded fight or world conquest; it is to spread and promote the rule of the religion of Allah. The first condition of this mission is peace and concord.70 This may have been a cautiousness that related to the banning of Islamist organizations by the military regime established after the coup of 1980. But there were other indications to Erdogans specificity as an organizer. Turgut zals brother, Korkut zal, was also a Naksibendi. The scattering of the Naksiben dis strength after many left the Welfare Party to join the Motherland Party had not discouraged Korkut zal. Together with leaders of the Motherland Party he crafted an organization that would bring the religious and other conservative forces, as well as bureaucrats of the same persuasion, under the same roof. This extra-political organization created by members of the Motherland Party harnessing shared cultural ideologies for the promotion of conservative policies was the so-called Unity Foundation (Birlik Vakf). It was behind the scenes throughout the career of R. T. Erdogan and replicated the well-known institution of the political action group.71
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This was still another level of the politicization of the Islamist discourse and its inclusion into the games played in civil society. When Recep Tayyip Erdogan won the mayoralty of Istanbul in 1994, exception alism assumed a new form: the forces of political power as structuring elements of behavior took over. This new structuration and the constraints that were part of it, as well as the history of Naksibendi change over two centuries, provide one key to the rise of the Adalet and Kalknma Partisi. Researchers who have analyzed the programs of the set of parties that followed upon the creation of the Islamist National Order Party in 1970 have found an interesting dichotomy in these organizations. On the one hand, one notices a set of foundational Islamic parties, the National Order, National Salvation and Welfare Parties. Here, the inspiration is one of capturing the state and using it to bring about changes in society by adopting the centralism of the Republic. The subsequently formed Islamic parties, Virtue (19972001), Felicity (2001) and AKP, have abandoned this stance and adopted a position much more synchronized with the world economy and liberalisma change which has often been stated to have proceeded since the 1990s.72 Here, finally was the area of the modern structuring force of organization and institution building, and world economy that had taken over (rather than been taken over by) the Naksibendi.73 Of course, the AKP has not exhausted the potential for Islamic socio-political movements in Turkey. But any rival to the AKP in the future will have to use similar venues based on knowledge, media technology and politics.
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Conclusion The history of modern Turkey is not that of a conflict between republicanism and Sultanism, nor is it a history of the strife framed by Islam and secularism. It is a complex, many-tiered encounter between traditional forces and modernity that have interpenetrated and been transformed over time due to their propinquity. It is also a story of the constitution of new spaces where these forces have met and changed. While it is easy to digress in a diffuse, periphrastic way about the plurality of modernities, it is the specificity of the historical processes that sets the character of the social and political circumstances with which we have to deal on an everyday basis. Vague, general statements about the modernities of Islam do not offer a clue as to the meaning we should draw out of the AKPs victory. The study of the continuities, ruptures and restructuring of background elements in Turkish history may be one small step in that direction. The appearance of the Islamic Voice among a new brand of Islamic intellectuals is a point that emerges from the data of this essay. The contemporary version of this discourse has been studied.74 However, this is not simply a present-day development. Its roots are in the late nineteenth century and one may speak of a further flowering between 1910 and 1920. One important difference between the earlier trend and its contemporary appearance is that the earlier discourse is one of an intellectual elite operating as part of the establishment whereas the contemporary group is one of persons of modest origins whose position in society is less assured.

Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today 161 There have been many explanations of the survival of an Islamic voice in Turkey: culture, institution, faith and identity are some of the poles around which such explanations have been offered. The point, however, is not the survival of the voice but its ability to work within the lineaments of the state. Charles Taylors underlining of the tacit dispensation of shared beliefs is absolutely essential at this point. In the Islamic cultural frame this sharing had an ontological legitimation, whose workings have been brought to light by Crone and Grgn. There was more, however, to the primacy of the state in the Islamic voice. The pre-Ottomans came to the Anatolian region already set on ruling over and organizing the disparate ethnic elements of the area. They received the authorization to use the title of sultan from the Abbasid Caliphate in 1085. The message of Islam, however, gave the pre-Ottomans a deeper-lying political dispensation in the sense that Gods message enjoined the Muslims to establish a collectivity, even before it gave a template for personal ethics. These two layers made up the tacit understandings that brought secular and religious forces together in the Ottoman Empire. In the long run, the imbrications of Islam with civil societydespite all obstacles to this appropriationsuggests something that goes beyond structural characteristics as useful explanatory variables. We may describe that characteristic as a foundation deeper than episodic social or political frames. Taking, once more, ones inspiration from Taylors Sources of the Self one could ask whether what we have here is the history of the emergence of a self still bearing some marks of its collectivistic origins. And, in this very emergence of the self, bringing religion and the self into the same ambit, does one notice the necessary reappearance of the One75 as a truth validator in a society where it has been replaced by the many? And, finally, is that the real core of the issue regarding multiple modernities? Acknowledgement The author would like to thank Ayse Saktanber, Martin van Bruinessen, Armando Salvatore, Nedim Nomer and Hasim Ko for a critique that has enabled the improvement of this essay.
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Notes
Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p.11. Ali Akel, Erbakan ve Generaller, 2nd edn. [Erbakan and Generals] (Istanbul: Sura, 1999); Necmettin Erbakan, Milli Grs [National View] (Istanbul: Dergah, 1975); Nuray Mert, Islam ve Demokrasi [Islam and Democracy] (Istanbul: z, 1998); Ergin Yldrm, Iktidar Mcadelesi ve Din [The Struggle I for Power and Religion] (Istanbul: Bilge, 1999). 3. For one exception, see Ali Yasar Sarbay, Postmodernite, Sivil Toplum ve Islam, 3rd edn. [Postmo dernity, Civil Society and Islam] (Istanbul and Bursa: Alfa, 2001). 4. Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Robert Wuthnow, Peter L. Berger, Thomas Luckmann. 5. See, for instance, Grace Davie, Religion in Modern Europe: A Memory Mutates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). For a challenge to the idea that religion is on the decline, see Peter Berger, Secularism in Retreat, in John L. Esposito and Azzam Tamimi (eds.), Islam and Secularism in the Middle East (London: Hurst, 2000).
]d I o [ t S [li ]d c e ]i c s [ e l d ]d I o [ t ]d I [ o t ]d I o [ t ]d I [ o t sd []i c e l ]d I o [ t

1. 2.

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7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

24.

The authors theme of dialectical interpenetration of religion and secularism differs from Olivier Roys delinking of Islam as a religion from a given culture. See Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam (London: Hurst, 2004). Tanzimat, in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn. (Leiden: Brill,). For information about political s parties this essay used Ali E ref Turan, Trkiyede Semen Davrans [Electoral Behavior in Turkey] (Istanbul: Bilgi niversitesi, 2004). For instance, Aziz al-Azmeh, Islams and Modernities (London: Verso, 1995). See Charles Taylor, Two Theories of Modernity, in Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar (ed.), Alternative Modernities (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), p.186, where background is used as tacit with references among others to Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966). About hypergood, see Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), p.91. See Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), pp.3934. Tahsin Grgn, Osmanl Nizm- lem Fikri ve Kaynaklar zerinde Baz Notlar [A Few Notes on the Sources of the Idea of Nizam-i Alem in Ottoman Thought], Islmi Arastrmalar Dergisi, Vol.13, No.2 (2000), pp.1808. Carter Vaughn Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). See Rudolf Peters, Ijtihad and Taqlid in 18th and 19th Century Islam, Die Welt des Islams, Vol.20 (1980), pp.13145. s For Nak ibendis, see Marc Gaborieau, Alexandre Popovic and Thierry Zarcone (eds.), Naqshbandis (Istanbul and Paris: ISIS, 1990). Nathan Leites, The Operational Code of the Politbureau (New York: Greenwood Press, 1972). For instance, see social practice in Teun A. van Dijk, Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Approach (London, Oaks and New Delhi: Sage, 1998), p.191. For the interpenetration of praxis as an elaboration of knowledge, see Eyerman and Jamison (1991), p.55. As typical of non-state Islamic organization, see Roman Loimeier and Stefan Reichmuth, Zur Dynamik Religis-Politischer Netzwerke in Muslimischen Gesellschaften, Die Welt des Islams, Vol.36, No.2 (1996), pp.14585. For an important exception, see Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structure of Kurdistan (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1992). In the sense of perverse. Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1996, 1997). See John L. Esposito (ed.), Political Islam: Revolution, Radicalism or Reform? (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997). For an exception, see John Obert Voll, Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World, 2nd edn. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1994). Ottoman Islam itself showed special characteristics such as fiqh (Islamic Law), derived from the Rationalist School (of Abu Hanifa), and gave a role to local custom (rf). The author thanks Professor Recep Sentrk for this clarification. A latent structuring of the authors thought has been Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Social Movements: A Cognitive Approach (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), esp. chs.2 and 3, pp.4593, i.e., Social Movements as Cognitive Practice and Dimension of Cognitive Practice, esp. pp.556. See also Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, MD, and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), for another view of background. As for structuration as an aspect of praxis, see Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984); and the description of the field in Ira J. Cohen, Theories of Action and Praxis, in Bryan Turner (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, 2nd edn. (London: Blackwell, 2000), pp.73111. For which see the nineteenth-century best seller, Franois Guizot, The History of Civilization in Europe, trans. William Harrlitt, ed. with an introduction by Larry Siedentop (London: Penguin
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Books, [1846] 1977); and Tuncer Baykara, Osmanllarda Medeniyet Kavram, 2nd edn. [The Concept of Civilization in Ottomans] ( zmir: Akademi Kitabevi, 1999). I Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom. See, for instance, Halil nalck, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 13001600, trans. Norman I Itzkowitz and Colin Imber (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), pp.1003. For Ktip elebi, see Hilmi Ziya lken, Ktip elebi ve Fikir Hayatmz [Ktip elebi and our Thought], in Ktip elebi Hayat ve Eserleri Hakknda Incelemeler [A Research on Ktip elebis Life and Works] (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu, 1991), pp.17796; and for Knalzde, see Baki Tezcan, The Definition of Sultanic Legitimacy in the Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Empire, Master of Arts Thesis, Program in Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, 1996. Halil nalck, Reis-l-Kttab, in Islam Ansiklopedisi, Vol.9, pp.67183. I Mehmed Efendi, Le Paradis des Infidles, trans., notes and annexed texts by Gilles Veinstein (Paris: Maspero, 1981), p.21. For the text, see Sema Arkan, Nizm-i Cedit Kaynaklarndan Ebubekir Ratip Efendinin Byk Layihas [The Report of Ebubekir Ratip Efendi from Nizam Cedit Sources], unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Institute of Social Science, Istanbul University, 1996. Arkan (1996), p.36. One of the first works that attempted to show how the newly established Ottoman engineering school had kept up with the times was a book by one of the graduates where the author described all the books he had read by French experts on military science, Diatribe de lingenieur Mustafa sur ltat actuel de lart militaire du Genie et des Sciences a Constantinople (skdar, 1218/1803). Kemal Beydilli, Trk Bilim ve Matbaaclk Tarihinde Mhendishne Matbaas ve Ktphanesi (1776 1826) [Engineering Press and Library in the History of Turkish Science and Printing] (Istanbul: Eren Yaynlar, 1995). Serif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought: A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp.196251. Ibid., p.18, quoting Ahmed Cevdet Pa a, Tezkir: 112, ed. by Cavit Baysun (Ankara: Trk Tarih s Kurumu, 1953), p.68. Ulug gdegmir, Kuleli Vakas Hakknda Bir Arastrma [A Research on the Kuleli Incident] (Ankara: I Trk Tarih Kurumu, 1937), which is on the wrong track. See the correct assessment by Namk Kemal in his Letters. Namk Kemal, Hususi Mektuplar, Vol.I: Istanbul, Avrupa ve Magosa Mektuplar [Private Letters: Istanbul, Europe and Magosa] ed. by Fevziye Abdullah Tansel (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu, 1967), p.240. Sleymaniye Library, Ali Nihat Tarlan, no.96. See Hseyin elik, Ali Suavi ve Dnemi [Suavi and His Era] (Istanbul: leti im Yaynlar, 1994), for I s a positive view of Ali Suavi and compare with Mardin (1962), p.365. Selim Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 18761909 (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 1998). Atilla Do gan, Sosyal Darwinizm ve Osmanl Aydnlar zerindeki Etkileri [Social Darwinism and its Effect on Ottoman Intellectuals], unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Marmara University Institute of Social Sciences, Istanbul, 2003. Serif Mardin, Jn Trklerin Siyasi Fikirleri: 18951908 [The Political Ideas of Young Ottomans: 18951908], 2nd ed. (Istanbul: leti im Yaynlar, 1983). I s Zafer Toprak, Ittihad-Terakki ve Cihan Harbi [The Union and Progress Party and the First World War] (Istanbul: Homer, 2003), pp.xv, 689. Serif Mardin, Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989). These ideas may be found in a three-volume anthology by smail Kara, Trkiyede Islamclk I Dsncesi: Metinler-Kisiler [The Idea of Islamism in Turkey: Texts and Personalities], Vol.3: (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 1997). For world developments, see Gaborieau et al. (1990). See Akbar, EI2, I, pp. 31617; Ahmad Sirhindi, EI2, I, pp. 2978.
dt Io [ ] ]d I o [ t ]d I [ o t ]d I o [ t ]d I [ o t sd []i cl e g e v b ] [ r ]d g] I [e o b [ e t v r ]i c s [ e l d ]d I [ o t ]d I o [ t ]d I o [ t si c [ ] e d l g] [e b e v r ]d I o [ t ]d I o [ t si c [ ] e d l ]d I [ o t ]d I o [ t ]d I [ o t ]i c s [ e l d [i s c ] e d l

25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

33.

34. 35. 36.

S [li ]d c e

37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44.

S [li ]d c e

S [li ]d c e

45. 46.

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S. Mardin
si c [ ] e d l

s 47. Hamid Algar, A Brief History of the Nak ibendi Order, in Gaborieau et al. (1990), pp.344. 48. See Marie Luise Bremer, Die Memoiren des Trkischen Derwisches A s Dede Ibrahim (Walldorf and Hessen: Verlag fr Orientkunde, 1959); and Bruinessen (1992), passim. 49. See John Obert Voll, Islam: Continuity and Change in the Modern World, 2nd ed., (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1994), pp. 2934. For a general study of the Sufi tradition, see Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein (eds.), Les Voies dAllah: Les Ordres Mystiques dans lIslam des Origines a Aujourdhui (Paris: Fayard, 1996). For Africa, see Knut S. Vikor, Sufi Brotherhoods in Africa, in Nehemia Levtzion and Randall L. Pouwels (eds.), The History of Islam in Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2000), pp.44176. See also Irene Melikoff, Hadji Bektach: un Mythe et ses Avatars (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998). 50. Bernd Radtke, Sufism in the 18th Century: An Attempt at a Provisional Appraisal, Die Welt des Islams, Vol.36, No.3 (1996), pp.32664; Rex Sean OFahey, Neo-Sufism Reconsidered, Der Islam, LXX (1993), pp.5287; and Bernd Radtke, Kritik am Neo-Sufismus, in Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke (eds.), Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics (Leiden, Boston and Kln: E. J. Brill, 1999), pp.16273. 51. Hamid Algar, Political Aspects of Naqshbandi History, in Gaborieau et al. (1990), pp.13940. s 52. See Marie Luise Bremer (1959); and Abdurrahman Memi , Hlid Bagdd ve Anadoluda Hlidlik (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 2000). 53. For which see Wadie Jwaideh, Krt Milliyetiliginin Tarihi Kkenleri ve Geli simi [The Historical Roots and Development of Kurdish Nationalism] (Istanbul: leti im Yaynlar, 1999), pp.1445. I s 54. Bruinessen (1992), pp.22230, who also explains the assuming of roles of political leadership by the s Nak ibendi. 55. Halil Cin, Tanzimat Dneminde Osmanl Hukuku in Hakk Dursun Yldz (ed.), 150. Ylnda Tanzimat (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu, 1992), pp. 1132. s 56. See, for the similar activities of Midhat Pa a, the papers presented in Uluslararas Midhat Pasa s Semineri: Bildiriler ve Tart smalar [International Seminar on Midhat Pa a: Statements and Debates] 8-10 Mays 1984 (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu, 1986). 57. A good picture of this change can be followed in the memoirs of Mahir z, whose father was Kad of I Ankara but enclosed in the new state institutions of the post-Tanzimat. Mahir z, Yllarn Izi [The I Traces of Years] (Istanbul: Kitabevi, 1990). 58. See, for instance, Ilhan Tekeli and Selim Ilkin, Egedeki Sivil Direnisten Kurtulu s Savasna Geerken [Civil Resistance to Independence War in the Aegean Region] (Ankara: Trk Tarih Kurumu, 1989). 59. For the latter, see Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 2nd edn. (London: Oxford University Press, 1968). s 60. Ru en akir, Ne Seriat Ne Demokrasi: Refah Partisini Anlamak (Istanbul: Metis, 1994), passim. Ay e Saktanber, in a remarkable work focusing on living an Islamic life in a Muslim community, s has studied their integration into the contemporary Turkish middle class in terms of consumption patterns and ideals of daily life. Ay e Saktanber, Living Islam (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002). s 61. This would seem to summarize the life experience of an Islamist who has no known connection to the Nak ibendi but who shows how some of the forces examined by the author worked to bring s believers into new cognitive and political spheres. See Mehmet Metiner, Yemyesil Seriat, Bembeyaz Demokrasi [All Green Sharia, All White Democracy] (Istanbul: Do gan Kitap, 2004), and for R. T. Erdogans learning process, pp.41415. 62. For a somewhat different approach to media, see Michael Meeker, The Turkish intellectual and his Audience: A New Configuration Writer and Reader among the Believers in the Republic of Turkey, in Social Practice and Political Culture in the Turkish Republic (Istanbul: ISIS Press, 2004), pp.271302; Analecta Isisiana, LXVIII; and also Oral Culture, Media Culture and the Islamic Resurgence in Turkey, in Meeker (2004), pp.24356. 63. Through mer Ziyaeddin Da gstan and at Da gstans death Mustafa Fevzi Efendi. A student of Mustafa Fevzi Efendi Abdlaziz Bekkine was the Shaikh of Nureddin Topu, the theoretician of a Turkish, culturally founded nationalism.
[i s c ] e d l ]d I [ o t sd []i cl e g [ b e v ] r ]d I o [ t g [ b e v ] r [i s c ] e d l ]d I o [ t si c [ ] e d l sd []i cl e sd []i cl e ]i c s [ e l d [d s] cl e i sd []i cl e ]d I o [ t ]d I o [ t ]d I [ o t [i s c ] e d l [i s c ] e d l [i s c ] e d l sd []i cl e sd []i c e l sli c [ e ] d ]i c s [ e l d S [i ] c e l d g] [e b e v r g] [e b e v r g] [e b e v r g] [e b e v r

Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today 165

64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. Ersin Grdogan, Grnmeyen niversite [The Unseen University] (Istanbul: Seha Ne riyat, 1989). s Ru en akr, Ayet ve Slogan [The Verse and The Slogan] (Istanbul: Metis, 1994), p.22. s Ibid., p.23. Ay e nc, Packaging Islam: Cultural Politics on the Landscape of Turkish Commercial Televis sion, New Perspectives on Turkey, No.10 (Spring 1994), p.24. Tanl Bora and Kemal Can, Bunalm Dnemine Girerken, Birikim (Jan. 1996), pp.3642. Metiner (2004), pp.36786. See Ru en akr and Fehmi almuk, Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Bir Dn smn yks [Recep s Tayyip Erdogan: A Story of Transformation] (Istanbul: Metis Yaynlar, 2001), p.29. Ibid., pp.478. See Serdar Sen, Parti Programlarnda Mill Gr s: AK Parti Mill Grs m? [National View in Party Programs: Is The AKP a National View Party?] (Istanbul: Noktakitap, 2004), pp.1213. For Erdogans view on secularism/laicism, see three foundational documents of the AKP in akr and almuk (2001), pp.23644. For a description of the ways in which Islamic ideology was being loosened in the Islamic parties of Turkey simply through the overwhelming focus on parliamentary tactics, see Yavuz Selim, Milli Gr s Hareketinden Ayrsmann Perde Arkas Yol Ayrm [The Crossroads of Deviation from The National View] (Ankara: Hiler Yaynlar, 2002), based on interviews of persons involved in the politics of Adalet, Refah and Fazilet Parties. Meeker (2004), pp. 24356. For which see Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory, trans. David Macey (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988).
g [e b e v r ] ][t d I o sli c [ e ] d sd []i cl e ][t d I o sd []i cl e sd []i cl e g [ b e v ] r [i s c ] e d l g [e b e v r ] ]d I o [ t S [li ]d c e [i s c ] e d l [i s c ] e d l g e b [ v r e ] [i s c ] e d l ]i c s [ e l d

74. 75.