InternationalPolitics,2007,0,(’’) r2007PalgraveMacmillanLtd1384-5748/07$30.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/ip Theorizing the Religious Resurgence Elizabeth Shakman Hurd DepartmentofPoliticalScience,WeinbergCollegeofArtsandSciences,NorthwesternUniversity, ScottHall601UniversityPlace,Evanston,IL60208,USA. E-mail:[email protected] Mostattempts to theorizethe religious resurgencerestonassumptions that reveal F more about the social and cultural foundations of contemporary international relations than they do about the phenomenon under study. These assumpOtions encourage scholars to see religion as either an irrational force to be expelled from modern public life or as the foundation of entrenched competition betwOeen rival civilizations.Ipresentanalternativetheorizationthatidentifiesreligiousresurgence whenever authoritative secularist settlements of the relationshipRbetween meta- physics and politics are challenged. Through a case study of the rise of Islamic political identity in Turkey, I show that the religious rePsurgence is neither epiphenomenal nor evidence of cultural incommensurability. It is instead a manifestationofattemptstoreconfiguremoderndivisioDnsbetweenthesacredand the secular. International Politics(2007)0, 000–000. doi:10.1057E/palgrave.ip.8800212 Keywords:Attaturk;Islam;seculardemocracyT;religion;politicalidentity;religious movements;Turkey;GeorgeW.Bush;IR;Kemalism;NationalOrderParty;Refah C Partisi E R R Introduction For at least three rOeasons, it has now become impossible to maintain that religion is irrelevant to international politics, as most conventional interna- tionalrelationsC(IR)theorywouldhaveit.1TheUnitedStatesandothershave hadahardtimeimposingtheirvisionofseculardemocracyaroundtheworld. N Second,there hasbeen theadventofaUSforeignpolicy model intheGeorge W. BuUsh administration that is officially secular but inspired by a kind of Christianity. Third, over the last several decades there has been a rise in religious movements and organizations with broad bases of national and transnational influence (Keddie, 1998). These developments and others like them have led many to refer to a ‘resurgence of religion’ in IR (Keddie 1998; Thomas, 2000, 2005). Thomas (2005, 43) has described this resurgence as the result of ‘a collapse in the faith of modernizing religionymotivated by the desireyto rethink and reevaluate how religion and modernity are related.’ Gml:Ver6.0 Journal:IP Diskused DespatchDate:29/5/2007 Template:Ver1.0 Article : ppl_ip_8800212 Pages:1–19 Op:NP Ed:Lakshmi ElizabethShakmanHurd TheorizingtheReligiousResurgence 2 There is good evidence for the resurgence. It is now unsustainable to claim that religion plays no significant role in IR; it has become a critical consideration in international security, global politics and US foreign policy (Haynes, 2004). Timothy Samuel Shah testified recently before the House International Relations Committee that ‘the importance of the religion factor in public life is not decreasing or remaining static but is increasing in almost every part of the world’ (http://wwwc.house.gov/international_relations/108/ sha100604.htm).Berger(2001,445),previouslyoneoftheforemostproponents of secularization theory, has observed that, ‘put simply, most of the world is F bubbling with religious passions.’ Petito and Hatzopoulos (2003,3) recently O suggested that, ‘the global resurgence of religion confronts IR theory with a theoretical challengecomparableto that raisedby the end of theCold Waror O the emergence of globalization.’ This paper tackles this challenge with a theorization of the religious R resurgence as a series of attempts to challenge and reconfigure modern divisions between the sacred and the secular. The religiousPrevival is neither a passing aberration on the road to modernization nor is it a confirmation of insurmountable cultural and religious difference in world politics. It is a D dispute over the very terms of the debate involving religion and politics, a disputethatisoftenpresumedtohavebeenresoElvedonceandforalllongago. Thereligiousresurgenceisevidenceofacontroversyoverhowmetaphysicsand T politics relate to each other and to the state that calls into question fundamental received definitions of theC‘sacred’ and the ‘secular.’ This argument differs from most extant attempts to theorize religious resurgence in IR, which tend to aEdd religious beliefs, actors and institutions intotheexistingliteratureonsovereignty,security,globalgovernance,conflict R resolution, human rights, inter-civilizational dialogue and the role of transnational actors (AppRleby, 2000; Falk, 2001, 2004; Dallmayr, 2002; Fox, 2002;CarlsonandOwens,2003;SeipleandHoover,2004).Thoughinteresting and worthwhile, nonOe of these approaches addresses a fundamental question posedoriginallybyAsad(1996)regardingreligionandpolitics: towhatextent C do assumptions about what ‘religion’ is and how it relates to ‘politics’ determinethekindsofquestionsworthaskingabout(inthiscase)the‘returnof N religion’andthekindsofanswersoneexpectstofind?2Inotherwords,towhat extentUdo secularist normative assumptions pre-structure our approach to and understanding of religious resurgence? These questions motivate this paper. I suggest that secularist assumptions are significant and that they profoundly affect how religious resurgence is theorized. They are part of the epistemo- logicalfoundationofthedisciplineandsoareembeddedinthehypothesesand empirical tests of much IR scholarship. As a result, most attempts to explain the religious resurgence reveal more about the epistemological assumptions of secularist theory than they do about the resurgence itself. InternationalPolitics 2007 0 PPL_IP_8800212 ElizabethShakmanHurd TheorizingtheReligiousResurgence 3 The theorization proposed in this paper identifies ‘religious resurgence’ whenever authoritative secularist settlements of the relationship between metaphysics and politics are called into question. From this perspective, the resurgence is neither epiphenomenal nor is it evidence of cultural or religious incommensurability. It is a manifestation of the attempt to reconfigure modern divisions between the sacred and the secular. It is a challenge to authoritative secularist settlements of the relationship between religion, politics and state power in India, the United States, Turkey, Latin America and elsewhere. My objective here is not to explain or predict F whensuchrevivalswilloccurorwhycertainformsofpolitical religion emerge O at a particular time or place. As Haynes (2004,456) has suggested in reference to the resurgence, ‘there is no simple, clearcut reason, no single O theoretical explanation to cover all cases.’3 Instead, my objective is two-fold: first, to demonstrate how powerful secularist norms have structured R knowledge and understanding of religious resurgence in contemporary IR; and second, to offer a new set of conceptual tools Pfor theorizing the resurgence.4 Thepaperisdividedintotwosections:conceptualandhistorical.Theformer D summarizes two variations of secularism that I have described in detail elsewhere and then explains how they influenceEcontemporary interpretations of the religious resurgence. I suggest that although these representations T identify important dimensions of the resurgence, the increasing presence of religious phenomena, identities and acCtors in IR is not fully captured as a protestagainstmodernization,aretreattooutdatedformsofpoliticalorder,or a backlash against ‘global modEernity, authenticity and development’ as Thomas (2005, 44) recently observed in his important book on the subject. R Though each of these accounts carries valuable insights, I propose an alternative theorization oRf the resurgence as a political contestation of the fundamentalcontoursandcontentofthesecularandthesacred,acontestthat signals thedisruptionOofpre-existingstandardsofwhat‘religion’isandhowit relates to politics. The resurgence of religion is evidence of a live and ongoing C controversy over the relationship between the sacred, the profane and the political that cuts through and calls into question the definition of and N boundaries between mundane and metaphysical, secular and sacred. The resurgUence of religion is evidence of fundamental disagreement over the relationship between metaphysics and politics that calls into question foundational secularist divisions between the secular and the sacred. One of the central claims of this paper is that the resurgence therefore must be understood and explained not through Western categories of the sacred and secular but as a process through which these basic ontologies of political and religious order themselves are being renegotiated and ultimately refashioned (Casanova, 1994). InternationalPolitics 2007 0 PPL_IP_8800212 ElizabethShakmanHurd TheorizingtheReligiousResurgence 4 Thesecondsectionofthepaperillustratesthisargumentwithastudyofthe rise of Islamic political identity in Turkey. My argument is that extant, predominantly secularist, epistemological assumptions limit understanding of the rise of Turkish political Islam and other religiously inspired forms of political identification. Developments in Turkey are difficult to theorize from withinatraditionalsecularistepistemologybecausetheydonotfalleasilyinto the categories available to Western observers for understanding religion and politics.Mytheorizationofreligiousresurgenceasachallengetoauthoritative settlements of religion and politics provides a more compelling account of F Turkish Islamism as neither epiphenomenal nor symptomatic of a ‘return to O Islam,’ but as a struggle over authoritative Kemalist divisions between the secular,thesacredandthepolitical.Itisarenegotiationofthepublictermsof O the relationship between religion and politics. R P Theorizing the Resurgence SincetheendoftheColdWar,mostpoliticalscientisDtshaveseenreligionasan inexplicable obstacle on the road to secular democracy or as evidence of E cultural and civilizational difference in world politics. As Euben (1999,7) argues,‘bothpessimisticandoptimisticproTgnosesofthepost-ColdWarworld are content implicitly to assume and thus reinforce the idea that religio- C political movements (among others) stand in relation to Western, secular powerandinternationalorderasthechaosoftheparticularistic,irrational,and E archaicstandinrelationtotheuniversalistic,rational,andmodern.’AsIhave argued elsewhere, two seculRarist normative assumptions have structured attemptstotheorizereligioninIR.Thefirstisthatreligionshouldbeexpelled R from democratic politics; this is laicism. The objective here is to create a public life in which religious belief, practices and institutions have lost their O political significance, fallen below the threshold of political contestation and/or been puCshed into the private sphere. Falk (2004, 140) describes laicists as ‘those who view religion as disposed toward extremism, even terrorism, as soon as itNabandons its proper modernist role as a matter of private faith and intrudes upon public space, especially on governance.’ As Haynes U (1997,713) has suggested, this is an especially influential perspective in the social sciences: thecommandingfiguresof19thcenturysocialscience—Durkheim,Weber, Marx—arguedthatsecularisationwasanintegralfacetofmodernisation,a global trend. Everywhere, so the argument goes, religion would become privatised,losingitsgriponculture,becomingapurelypersonalmatter,no longer a collective force with mobilising potential for social change. InternationalPolitics 2007 0 PPL_IP_8800212 ElizabethShakmanHurd TheorizingtheReligiousResurgence 5 ThesecondformofsecularismisthebeliefthatJudeo-Christianityformsthe unique basis of secular democracy, what I call ‘Judeo-Christian’ secularism. This refers to the belief that Christianity and/or Judeo-Christian tradition is the unique and inimitable foundation of secular public order and modern political institutions (Stark, 2005). Unlike laicism, Judeo-Christian secularism doesnotassumeorpromoteadeclineinorprivatizationofreligiousbeliefand practice, although it does assume some differentiation between the temporal andthereligious.ForJudeo-Christiansecularists,politicalorderintheWestis based in a common set of values with their roots in Western Christianity. F Secularism helps to constitute the ‘common ground’ upon which Western O democratic order rests. The West, accordingly, displays a unique dualism between God and Caesar, church and state that is essential for democracy to O flourish (author). The idea, as Buruma (2004, 46) observes, is that ‘only if secular government [were] firmly embedded in the Christian faith could its R democratic institutions survive.’5 Religious tradition is a source of political cohesion, and citizens who share religious sensibilitiePs and enter into democratic deliberation will arrive at some form of moral and political consensus (Jelen, 2000, 90). D These two forms of secularism are strategies for managing the relationship betweenreligionandpolitics.BotharesecularistEinthattheydefendsomeform oftheseparationofchurchandstate,buttheydosoindifferentwaysandwith T Q1 different justifications. Both emphasize what (Martin, 1978, 2005; Casanova, 1994,19)referstoasthe‘coreandcentraClthesisofthetheoryofsecularization:’ the functional differentiation of the secular and the religious spheres. Laicism also adopts two corollaries to thiEs differentiation argument, advocating the privatization and, in some cases, the decline and/or elimination of religious R belief and practice altogether (Casanova, 1994, 19–20). My argument isthat thRe assumptions aboutreligionand politics underlying these different forms of secularism make it difficult to fully capture the phenomena commonOly identified as ‘religious resurgence.’ For laicists such as John Rawls and Karl Marx, democratic public order is separationist, in C accordance with Rawls’ (1993,151) famous liberal injunction to ‘take the truths of religion off the political agenda.’ Marx (cited in Euben, 1999, 27) N illustrates this view in its most extreme form: ‘[religions are] no more than stagesUin the development of the human mind — snake skins which have been cast off by history, and man [is] the snake who clothed himself in them.’ For many secular theorists following in the intellectual footsteps of these thinkers, the religious resurgence appears as a reaction against the changes imposed by modernizationandglobalization,amomentofirrationalitytobeovercomeor outgrown on the road to secular democracy, an epiphenomenal manifestation ofstructural,social,economicandpoliticalgrievances,oralloftheabove.For instance, the resurgence is often explained as a backlash against the effects of InternationalPolitics 2007 0 PPL_IP_8800212 ElizabethShakmanHurd TheorizingtheReligiousResurgence 6 Q2 government efforts to modernize (Saliyeh, 1990). As governments and ruling elites came under criticism for corruption, economic failure and political repression, so the argument goes, ‘people turned to other leaders and institutions to champion their interests’ (Rinehart, 2004, 271). The essential element tying laicist accounts together is their common assumption that the resurgenceisepiphenomenal:itisthesurfacemanifestationofdeepunderlying political and economic grievances. From this perspective, the key question for IR is, as Rinehart (2004, 272) argues, ‘the extent to which changes in the international system since World War II have contributed to a resurgence in F theroleofreligioninthepoliticsofthedevelopingworld.’Thisquestionleads O directly to a focus on material and structural explanations of religious resurgence. O ForJudeo-Christiansecularists,suchasLewis(2002,1993) andHuntington (1996), religious resurgence confirms two fundamental elements of world R order. First, it demonstrates the moral, religious and (therefore) political incommensurability of different civilizations, and, secondPly, it confirms the ‘natural’ relationship between Judeo-Christianity and secular democracy. Despite attempts to imitate western institutions and legal codes, other D civilizations are seen as incapable of replicating the separation of religion and state as realized in Judeo-Christian majoritEy settings such as Europe, the United States and Israel. The religious resurgence thus confirms the existence T of deep cultural divides that cannot be overcome with modernization, economicand/ormoraldevelopmentorCtheglobalizationofseculardemocratic norms and institutions. I do not want to suggest thatEJudeo-Christianity has no relationship to secularization and democratization. Protestantism, for instance, played a role R inbringingaboutthespecificformofdifferentiationbetweenthereligiousand temporalspheresthattooRkholdintheWest(Philpott,2002b).Therehavealso been important developments in the now relatively accommodative relation- ship between the CatOholic Church and modern liberaldemocracies, cautiously evolving into what Stepan (2000) has referred to as the ‘twin tolerations.’6 As C Philpott(2004,43and36)argues,‘todayitisdifficulttothinkofaninfluential Catholicsectorinanystatethatactivelyopposesliberaldemocracy,’whilealso N cautioning that ‘the Church’s support for democracy has not been the same everywUhereythe Church’s democratizing influenceywas complex, varying in time, manner and extent.’ The problem is not that Judeo-Christian secularism posits connections between Christianity and secularization, which certainly exist on multiple levels (Blumenberg, 1986; Bellah, 1991; Milbank, 1993; Q3 Casanova,1994;Connolly,1999;vanderVeerandLehmann,1999),butthatit generally fails to entertain the possibility that these same connections might exist in the case of non-Judeo-Christian religions and (alternative forms of) secular democracy. In short, it posits exclusivist cultural boundaries of InternationalPolitics 2007 0 PPL_IP_8800212 ElizabethShakmanHurd TheorizingtheReligiousResurgence 7 democracythatfailtoaccountfornon-Westerndemocraticpracticeswiththeir origins in religious tradition. As Stepan (2000, 38) argues, ‘a central thrust of Huntington’smessageisnotonlythatdemocracyemergedfirstwithinWestern civilizationbutthattheother greatreligiouscivilizationsoftheworldlackthe unique bundle of cultural characteristics necessary to support Western-style democracy.’ Islamic law, from this perspective, cannot offer fertile ground for democratization, but instead sets the preconditions for totalitarianism by attemptingtoregulateallaspectsoflife.AsHashemi(2003,563)hasobserved of Lewis, for example, ‘according to Bernard Lewis, Islamic tradition and F liberal democracy are fundamentally incompatible and the ultimate choice O facingtheMuslimworldatthebeginningofthetwenty-firstcenturyisbetween religious fanaticism and modernization.’ In this view, secular democracy is a O unique Western achievement, and non-Western civilizations and in particular ‘Islamiccivilization’aremissingthiscritical(Christian)distinctionbetweenthe R secular and the sacred. Stepan (2000, 40) has criticized this set of assumptions as ‘the fallacy of unique founding conditions.’ P Thenormativeassumptionsunderlyingthesetwoformsofsecularismarenot fatal; indeed, representatives of these positions have brought valuable insights D to the discussion of religion in IR. However, I believe that these assumptions also impose significant epistemological limitatioEns, and, as a result, explana- tionsthatrelyexclusivelyuponthemprovideonlyapartialaccountofreligious T resurgence.Thereligiousrevivalisneitherarebellionagainstsecularmodernity nor is it confirmation of intractable reCligious and civilizational differences in IR. It is part of a dispute over the very terms of the debate involving religion and politics that are often taken fEor granted. It is evidence of a controversy over how ethics, metaphysics and politics relate to each other and to the state R thatcallsintoquestionfundamentalreceiveddefinitionsofthe‘secular’andthe ‘sacred.’ R In making this argument, I am building on Asad’s (2003) attempt to move beyondDurkheimianOattemptstouniversalizeasingleconceptof‘religion’and the ‘sacred.’ Instead, the idea is to ‘shift our preoccupation with definitions of C ‘‘the sacred’’ as an object of experience to the wider question of how a heterogeneous landscape of power (moral, political, economic) is constituted, N whatdisciplines(individualandcollective)arenecessarytoit’(Asad,2003,36). ‘ReligUious resurgence’ thus appears whenever authoritative secularist settle- ments of the relationship between metaphysics, politics and state power are challenged. The central concern for scholars of religion and IR from this perspective is not only the degree to which religion penetrates international, transnational or domestic politics, which it certainly does, but also and more fundamentally how secularist epistemologies and the metaphysical assump- tions and institutional sites of power that sustain them are challenged and ultimately transformed by the developments associated with ‘religious InternationalPolitics 2007 0 PPL_IP_8800212 ElizabethShakmanHurd TheorizingtheReligiousResurgence 8 resurgence.’ This shift in focus allows for a different perspective on the rise of religion as an attempt to reconfigure the boundaries of the ‘secular’ and to refashionthefrontiersofthe‘political’.Thenextsectionappliesthisargument to explain the rise of Islamism in modern Turkey. Islamic Resurgence in Turkey At the founding of the modern Turkish republic in 1923, Mustafa Kemal F (Atatu¨rk) adapted the French model of laicism involving state control of O religious expression and institutions into a unique mixture of Turkish nationalist, Sunni Islamic and European laicist traditions that became known O as Kemalism (Halliday, 2000, 183; White, 2002, 35). For Kemalists, progress was defined as the management and containment of local Islamic culture R Q4 (Norton, 1995; Yavuz, 2000; Navaro-Yashin, 2002; Yilmaz, 2002). Atatu¨rk’s reforms were codified in a new Turkish Civil CodePenacted in 1926 (a translation of the Swiss code civile), which legalized state attempts to regulatereligion.ThisincludedabanonSufitarikats(religiousbrotherhoods) D and state suppression of Sufi activities. The national capital was moved from Istanbul to Ankara to sever ties with the ByzaEntine and Ottoman past. The caliphateandthereligiouscourtswereabolishedin1924,thecalendarchanged T from the Islamic to the Gregorian and Arabic script replaced with the Latin alphabet. The Turkish language was ‘pCurified’ of all words with Arabic roots; and ‘within three months all books, newspapers, street signs, school papers, and public documents had to be wEritten using the new letters’ (Goldschmidt, Jr., 2002, 219). Clocks were set to European time, rather than Muslim time in R which the date changed at sunset. Women were discouraged from wearing traditional dresses, and sRometimes were forbidden from entering prominent publicplacesinAnkaraintraditionalattire(Yavuz,2000,24).Tekkes(lodges) and tu¨rbes (shrines oOf saints) were closed by the state. It is usually assumed that Kemalism favored a strict separation of religion C and politics. Yavuz (1997, 65), for example, describes Kemalist reforms as an attempt ‘to guide an exodus from the Ottoman-Islamic pasty[using] the N French conception ofrigid secularism asacompass todeterminethedirection of theUexodus.’ As Davison (2003, 341) has shown, however, the situation is slightly more complex insofar as the Turkish state ‘never made religion or Islam an entirely separate (and thus, ‘‘private’’) matteryThe separation of religion from its previous position of influence constituted a shift in Islam’s institutional and legitimation position, not its formal, full eliminationyIslam was not disestablished, it was differently established.’7 This reconfiguration of Ottoman and Islamic tradition brought a range of responses. Some Turks adopted what they perceived to be ‘Western’ ways, as suggested by the InternationalPolitics 2007 0 PPL_IP_8800212 ElizabethShakmanHurd TheorizingtheReligiousResurgence 9 following statement from Demerath’s (2001,75) interview with a Turkish colleague: Turkeybecameanationofforgetters.Manyinmyparents’generationwere eager to renounce the past in favor of a new westward-looking way of life. My family even got ridof ourheirloom Turkish rugsin favor of chic, wall- to-wall carpeting. I recently learned that some of those rugs are now in museum shows in the United States. Others looked to both Kemalist and Ottoman tradition, reflecting the fact F that Atatu¨rk’s reforms had ‘split the mind of Turkey between acceptance of O secular values and a desire to go back to Muslim principles and institutions’ (Goldschmidt,2002,223). Yilmaz (2002,7) has argued that despite the O imposition of secular law, Turks effectively combined unofficial Islamic law andofficialsecularlawintoahybridpermittingtheretentionoftraditionalties R toIslamicpractice:‘inallsortsofspheresoflife,Muslimlawisreferredtoand obeyed by many people despite the non-recognition of thePstate.’ Other Turks were uncomfortable with the reforms; O¨ zdalga (1998) for example describes the rise of a ‘silent suspicion’ of the Kemalists among rural D individuals sympathetic to popular Islam and the cultural resources of the tarikats. As a result, various attempts to re-legiEtimize Islam in Turkish public life and renegotiate the Kemalist settlement began to emerge. In 1970 the first T party to self-identify as ‘Islamic’ was established, the National Order Party Q5 (NOP). Following the military coup ofC1971 the government closed down the NOP, its leaders went into exile, and in 1973 the Party reopened as the National Salvation Party (NSP), lEed by Necmettin Erbakan. After a coup in 1980 that shut down all political parties, the former NSP arose as the Welfare R Party (Refah Partisi, or RP) in July 1983. The Iranian Revolution and anger over government corruptRion added momentum to the RP’s program in the early 1980s, at the same time that state-sponsored political and economic reformsfavoredanaOccommodationistapproachtoIslamicandSufiactivismin an attempt to co-opt the Islamists and suppress the left (Yavuz, 1997, 69–70). C After a 1987 referendum allowed ex-politicians to re-enter politics, Necmettin Erbakan assumed the leadership of RP and took a strong stance against N Kemalism, advocated an Islamic currency, Islamic United Nations, Islamic NATOU and an Islamic version of the European Union. He condemned imperialism and Zionism, and publicly supported a campaign to recapture Jerusalem. During the 1980s and 1990s, the RP’s appeal spread from its rural constituents to the urban lower middle classes.8 In 1994, RP won 19.09% of the vote in municipal elections, with the two leading center-right parties obtaining about 20% each, with electoral participation at 94%. The party won the mayorships of 30 main cities, including the business and cultural capital, Istanbul, and the national capital, InternationalPolitics 2007 0 PPL_IP_8800212 ElizabethShakmanHurd TheorizingtheReligiousResurgence 10 Ankara.Shortlythereafterinthe1995generalelections,RPreceived21.4%of the vote, and Erbakan became Prime Minister in a coalition government with C¸iller’sTruePathPartytoformthefirstreligious-secularcoalitiongovernment inTurkey’s73-yearhistory.Bythemid-1990s,RPhadestablisheditselfasone of the most influential political actors in Turkey although it remained internally divided, with conservatives supporting an Islamic-friendly form of modernization and radicals skeptical of universalist approaches to law and governance on the other (Gu¨lalp, 1997). RP drew support from Islamist intellectualsseekingfreedomofreligiousexpression,SunniKurdsseekingstate F recognition, the urban poor seeking social justice and the new bourgeoisie O advocating liberalization and the eradication of state subsidies for large corporations (Yavuz,1997,79–80). As White (2002,3) notes, ‘the political O interestsofitsconstituentsrangedwidely,fromsocialandeconomicreformto replacing the secular state system with one founded on Islamic law.’ Gu¨lalp R (2001, 444) describes the social base of the movement as ‘a vertical bloc comprising segments of different socio-economic classePsyunited in their commonoppositiontoKemalismandtheirexpressionofpoliticalwillthrough the assertion of an Islamic identity.’ Go¨le (1995,39) traces the party’s success D totheparticipationofcriticalIslamistelitessuchasengineers,intellectualsand women in a system supportive of their sEocial mobility and political participation. The RP also contained within its ranks ‘the peripheral groups, T theurbanunderclasseswho, inacontext offrustrationanddespair,caneasily turn toward terrorism and crime’ (GCo¨le,1995,39). For example, Welfare brought in the Kurdish vote ‘timidly in discourse, but forcefully in election results’(Go¨le,1995,41).ItofferedaEmeansofidentificationforindividualswho identifiedwithIslamicand/orOttomantraditionbyseekingto‘incorporatethe R Ottomantimesintonationalmemory,unsettlingthesecularistconstructionsof nationalhistorycenteredRaroundtheKemalist/Republicaneraofthetwentieth century’ (C¸inar,2001,365). The Kemalist respOonse to the rise of RP was to ‘drown the party at the bottom of the sea.’9 On February 28, 1997, the National Security Council C forcedErbakantoaccept18‘recommendations’reaffirmingthesecularnature of the Turkish state and designating political Islam the top national security N concern. The military briefed governmental, judicial and non-governmental organUizations on thepresenceof an ‘Islamicthreat’in Turkey.Succumbing to the pressure, Erbakan resigned on June 18, 1997. In this ‘soft coup,’ the army enjoyed the backing of the Kemalist establishment, including much of the military, civil service and intelligentsia. In January 1998, the Turkish Constitutional Court banned the RP, expelled Erbakan from Parliament, tried him for sedition, banned him from politics for 5 years and seized the Party’sassets.TheCourtarguedthat,‘laicismisnotonlyaseparationbetween religionandpoliticsbutalsoanecessarydivisionbetweenreligionandsociety’ InternationalPolitics 2007 0 PPL_IP_8800212