Alev Cinar

Subversion and Subjugation in the Public Sphere: Secularism and the Islamic Headscarf

I n the mid-1980s, university students wearing the Islamic headscarf started to appear in public places in Turkey, giving a new sort of visibility to Islam in the public sphere, contrary to the secularist norms sanctioned by the state. Within a decade the headscarf went from being a controversial item of religious attire to a matter of Turkish national security. In February 1997, the National Security Council identified the headscarf as one of the main indicators of what they called the “Islamic threat”—the single most important threat to the well-being and security of the country—and called for the enforcement of a ban on the headscarf in all public places, including classrooms, universities, and public offices. How is it that such a simple item of clothing can turn into such a powerful disruptive force? This article explores the headscarf controversy in the context of contemporary debates about gender and the public sphere. I am particularly interested in how the public sphere in Turkey has been produced in relation to norms of secularism and modernity by the forging and display of new gender identities, especially through regulations on clothing and the appearance of women. I also examine the emergence of new Islamic subjectivities through the increasing visibility of the Islamic headscarf in secular public spaces, which poses a sufficiently formidable challenge to the authority and power of secularist discourse that it has been deemed

THE JUSTICE AND DEVELOPMENT PARTY: TURKEY'S EXPERIENCE WITH ISLAM, DEMOCRACY, LIBERALISM, AND SECULARISM

It would probably be quite curious, if not confusing, for uninformed readers of Turkish politics who are interested in learning more about Turkeys ruling party, the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi/Justice and Development Party), to pick up these five books, all written by scholars of Turkish politics, all dealing with the ideology of the AKP and the social and political conditions that gave rise to it, all published by prestigious publishers, and realize that they make almost completely opposite claims. For example, while Banu Eligur in The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey claims that the AKP is an Islamist party that is “opposed to democracy” (p. 11), William Hale and Ergun Ozbudun in Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey: The Case of the AKP see the AKP as a secular, conservative-democratic party that clearly rejects Islamism as a political ideology and is perhaps making the most significant contribution to the expansion of democracy in Turkey.

Politics of Nationhood and the Displacement of Founding Moment: Contending Histories of the Turkish Nation

This study examines the conception of nationhood developed by a political movement referred to as Ulusalcilik (nationalism), which emerged at the turn of the century. We focus on ways in which the Ulusalci movement makes use of nation-building techniques to establish and propagate its own version of Turkish nationhood as one that is primordially secular and patriotic. This is expressed in its opposition to Islamism, Ottomanism, and what it sees as imperialist Western powers. We argue that the most significant technique Ulusalci nationalists use to rebuild Turkish nationhood is a relocation of the nations founding moment, from the official Kemalist one marked by the founding of the Republic in 1923 to the War of Independence fought against the European powers between 1919 and 1922. Our premise is that nationhood is ultimately the product of storytelling, and that the politics of nationhood involves the contentious production, dissemination, and negotiation of different stories and their corresponding founding moments. We analyze the story of Turkish nationhood told in the bestselling book Those Crazy Turks , which became the bible of the Ulusalci movement. We argue that the Ulusalci narration of Turkish nationhood interpellates a new national subject that is primordially secular, militaristically patriotic, and adamantly anti-Western. These are projected as essential qualities that must, at all cost, be upheld and defended against Islamist, Ottomanist, and Western powers that are conspiring to bring Turkey down.

PURITAN ISLAM: THE GEOEXPANSION OF THE MUSLIM WORLD

Barry A. Vann, PURITAN ISLAM: THE GEOEXPANSION OF THE MUSLIM WORLD, New York: Prometheus Books, 2011, 228 pp.,

Modernity, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey: Bodies, Places, and Time

55.00 (hardback) About 20 years ago I had come upon an article by Daniel Pipes titled...