Transformation of Political Islam in Turkey: Causes and Effects.

• Author: Okumuj, Muhammed Yasir
• Position: Book review

Transformation of Political Islam in Turkey: Causes and Effects

By Hakan Koni

Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018, 142 pages, [pounds sterling]58.99, ISBN: 1527507580

In Transformation of Political Islam in Turkey: Causes and Effects, Hakan Koni focuses on Turkish Political Islam's (TPI) transformation in terms of the movement's understanding of secularism and foreign policy. While the structure of the book is quite comprehensive in that it begins with the late Ottoman era, the author focuses on the era between 1960 and 2012. Koni's first argument is that the major ideal of TPI transformed from establishing an Islamic polity to a rather moderate model of promoting democracy for all segments of Turkish society.

Among many reasons behind the transformation of TPI, the author highlights two: the attitudes of the state elite and the influence of globalization. The state elite endorsed a rigid secularism, resembling the French model of laicism, and radically limited the scope of religion in the public sphere. Thus, "secularist state elites have traditionally been the most powerful agent determining the limits and space of action of political Islam in Turkey" (p. 3), as the traditional public sphere, where religion was free, was the ground on which political Islam was sprouted. Such a public sphere, devoid of religion, led to the development of TPI as a rather moderate ideology.

It should be noted that the conceptualization of secularism is missing in the text, making it difficult to make sense of the transformation of the system and the actors in Turkey. How the author defines secularism is a significant issue, because both the Ottoman and Turkish experiences of secularism have peculiarities. Preferably, the term "laicity" is more comprehensive in explaining the Turkish experience. Laicity expresses a public sphere owned by the state, in comparison to secularism where the public sphere belongs to the individual. The long-standing debates on the public sphere in Turkey are related to these diverse definitions of laicism/secularism. Furthermore, it can be argued that neither laicism nor secularism is suitable to explain the Ottoman experience. These concepts do not mirror the development of secularism in the Ottoman Empire. Conceivably, a more suitable concept is quasi-laicism, (1) referring to a laicity-like-phenomenon, a de facto laicism so to say.

Chapter one addresses the Ottoman sources of Turkish secularism. According to...