Identities are awesome phenomenon. People may choose identities but they also find themselves in identity cocoons as they join or are born into social groups. Identities are relatively lasting but they change in time. Their importance may increase or decrease according to circumstances.

An identity acquires acute importance when it is faced with an existential danger. Its defense becomes a life-and-death matter. This is the time when the identity-group demands the utmost sacrifice from its members. In answering this call, members may sacrifice their lives or take the lives of their ‘fatal enemies’.

NATIONAL IDENTITY

What is our collective (national) identity? It is officially defined as Turkish and Muslim. When the constitutive ideology of the republic was Turkish nationalism, Turkishness was expressed loudly; being a Muslim was only whispered.

Success of nationalism depends on the effectiveness of the national state in providing progress, welfare, high living standards, social consensus and respect of the nation among other nations. States that fail to realize these expectations are called failing states. They cannot hold their nations together. Libya, Iraq and Syria are such states.

There are also frail states like Egypt and Lebanon who can hardly maintain the integrity of the nation and economic sustenance. They face the danger of disorder.

Failing and frail states may have big state apparati, relatively crowded armies but as long as they fail to provide justice, participation/inclusion of diverse groups (division of power) in politics and a functioning economy (efficient division of labor) they are bound to face dissolution.

Sub-state identities fill the gap and gain power and prominence. This is a matter of fact because people need to cling onto life, to feel secure and act in concert with others. They need protective and functional social cocoons.
When nationalism fails to be a binding factor people revert back to their faith groups (religions), denominations and as a last effort to their kinship (ethnic and tribal) groups.


AND TURKEY…

The evolution of the Turkish national identity has followed the same course. The ruling elite have decided to vaccinate the Turkish youth increasingly sympathizing with the Left with Islam in order to curb the danger of Communism in late 1960s. The “Turk-Islam Synthesis” is the project of the strategy of distancing the Turkish youth from leftist inclinations.

The ‘Turk-Islam synthesis’ had been a de-facto reality when the Turks had adopted Islam a thousand years ago. However with this political project, the mixture has changed with more weight on (Sunni) Islam, making it an Islam-Turkish synthesis. The chemistry of Turkish politics has never been the same since then.

The basic assumption of the so called ‘synthesis’ was that pious people, especially the Sunnis, are obedient to the state. If religion is emphasized further their docility would be the guarantee of public peace and order.

Step by step Islamic principles and way of life were introduced into the public sphere. This way the ruling cadres thought that keeping the state secular but Islamizing the society would extend their rule. They had no idea that this initiative, put into effect officially, would create and expand an alternative political ground with growing civic initiative. With the 1990s their worst case scenario came into being culminating in the electoral victory and 12 years of continuous rule of the AK (Justice and Development) Party.

Politicizing Islam to reinforce the secular state was an oxymoron and the making of secular ruling elite that rule Turkey no more. Simultaneously a similar project was put into effect internationally with encroaching Soviet influence extending from Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf. So called “Moderate Islam” was supported by the West against more independent national politics rather than Communism.

Building a “Green Belt” strategy to contain Soviet influence was also a political project instrumentalizing religion (Islam) for political/strategic ends. Like the creature of Frankenstein what was left behind was neither religion nor politics, but a dangerous integration of both: Holy War, hating its creator.

Muslims disgruntled in every corner of the World, excluded and exploited by tyrants in their home countries used their religious bond to build a political community of the disenchanted. They are against both their history believed to be stained and perverted by colonialism (of the West) and their rulers who distanced them from the communal values and practices of the Prophet.

They want to roll back history and everything associated with it. This is politics alright but sanctified by religion that is no more a faith but a political force. Its inventors and now practices have no respect for religion.