Islam and the Turkish state

Tensions have existed between Islamic powerbrokers and the state of Turkey since the state was founded. While Islam was the state religion of modern Turkey's precursor, the Ottoman Empire, it was not long after the Republic of Turkey was founded that Islam was removed as the state religion in favor of the secular approach of the country's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. But there have always been tensions between Islam and the state since that point. Turkey's demographics -- split between a handful of large, secular cities and a more rural, religious majority population, and Turkey's vision as a balance of power between east and west, are among the chief causes of this tension. This paper will examine this tension further, as it continues to manifest to this day.

During Ottoman times, religious law co-existed with civil law. Ataturk, after founding the Republic of Turkey, denied Islam status as the state religion in 1928 as the culmination of reforms that started in 1919 after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. The state is not irreligious, but rather takes a view of religious neutrality. The first two articles of the Turkish Constitution establish the republic as the form of government, and that "the Republic of Turkey is a democratic, secular and social state governed by rule of law..." (Constitution of Turkey). The Constitution has held secularism as state policy ever since. That Islam has sought to increase its power in Turkey is nothing new -- Reed (1954) wrote about this -- but today the country sits in conservative hands.

Secularism is considered an important element of the identity of the Turkish state, as the state was founded on these principles and worked for several years to establish them. They are a key component of Ataturk's vision for Turkey, linked in with the vision for the country itself. But this does not mean that all Turkish people agreed with this vision. The vision itself was rooted in Ataturk's beliefs about the downfall of Islam over the preceding centuries. He viewed this downfall as the result of Muslims themselves, that "the weight of rigid orthodoxy had turned Islam from a reasoned belief to blind faith," and that is was necessary for the advancement of Islam itself to be "cleansed of irrational and inflexible accretions" (Turfan, 2016). Thus, secularism in Turkey was never as much about the rejection of Islam as it was about rejection of a dogmatic view of Islam, and his vision of a secular society that was still Islamic but not beholden to orthodoxy; was flexible, capable of learning, and remaining modern.

Ataturk's vision of a secular Turkey created two main tensions. The first is between the more secular people within the society and the religious. Large cities were more cosmopolitan -- before the First World War, Constantinople was half Christian -- and less religious than the countryside. While most Turks are nominally Muslim and the cities full of mosques, they are more modern and progressive in general, and also happen to dominate political, cultural and economic life in the country. Much of Turkey remains primarily an agriculture economy. The values of the people in the cities and those in the country are substantially different, and the differences in power between the areas was symbolized by religion and attitudes towards the West. While Turkey's big cities looked westward, its military aligned with NATO, and is politicians dreamed of the European Union, most of Turkey remains rural, conservative and religious (Taspinar, 2012).

The tension also manifests in the situation with the Kurdish minority. Kurds in general are highly religious and rural, and the Turkish government has oppressed that group, leading to open rebellion among Kurds. The struggles that the Kurds have taken on an ethnic component, of course, but they also reflect the idea that the tensions between Islam and the Republic of Turkey are not just about the direction of the Islamic faith, but about power. One outcome of Kemalism in Turkey is that Islam lacks political power, lacking in legal weight, and this relative lack of influence over power in the country is not something that the clerics are accustomed to, nor their followers, who may prefer more religion in their state. The secular urban societies take the opposite view -- that the influence of religion is overbearing, and they prefer that political and military power be aligned with more progressive outlooks.

Ataturk, and indeed many Turkish leaders, have recognized that Turkey takes a unique geopolitical position in the world. At the literal crossroads between Europe and Asia, and with economic power centered on one of the world's largest and historically most-powerful cities in Istanbul, Turkey has always faced in both directions. After all, the Ottomans crossed into the Balkans before they turned their attention south. It is not difficult to see that part of Turkey's geopolitical power rests with its status as a crossroads culture, adaptable to both European culture and values, and to Islamic ones as well. Turkey's turn to NATO and one-time desire to join the EU reflect its desire to play this role in the geopolitical world that formed after the First World War.

The tensions that exist today in part reflect tensions between the conservative elements of Turkish society and the country's turn to the West. While the economic powerbrokers in Istanbul and the political ones in Ankara saw the future of Turkey is tied to trade with Europe, and the country's role in the world expanded by the collapse of the Soviet Union -- creating newly-independent Turkic-speaking states -- these ambitions clash with the needs of the majority population in rural and small town Anatolia (Jung & Piccoli, 2001). The economic gains, for example, from trade with Europe, are concentrated in the major cities, creating income inequality and in some, a feeling of helplessness. Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir combined for 45.8% of the country's GDP, representing significant economic disparity between these urban centers and the rest of the country, when extrapolated to a per capita basis (Turkstat, 2014). Per capita GDP in the wealthiest provinces runs around four times that of the poorest. So there is an economic element to the strained relationship between Turkey and Islam -- it's not just about the role of religion in society.

Islam holds more power in the rural areas than in the cities. The tensions may run the gamut of economic, social and religious, but ultimately religion is a source of power in the rural areas, and lay at the founding of the ruling AKP as well. While Islam still has only limited political power in Turkey, religion is a large, organized body, one that has the power to make rural voices heard in the halls of power. For that reason alone, Islam was going to be positioned with a confrontational stance towards Kemalism. Islam's power in Turkey derives from the sway it holds over voters, and beyond that from its ability to reflect the desires of those voters, who otherwise do not see the value of Turkey's turn to secularism and the West. There was never strong buy-in for Kemalism in rural areas, so the people who live in those regions have essentially lacked a voice for nearly the past hundred years, and Islam gives them this voice.