Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2015
The tradition of Kemalist secularism (laiklik) in Turkey is often cited to distinguish Turkey as an exceptional case among predominantly Muslim countries. While it is true that the Turkish Constitution, laws, and legal opinions approach the relationship between the state and religion very differently than those of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, or even Indonesia, it would be wrong to underestimate the role that religion plays in the formation of Turkish legal norms, including citizen understanding of those norms. There is a wealth of literature describing the nature of Turkish secularism and its evolution. A number of both quantitative and qualitative studies inquire about the preference for Shari'a among Turkish voters. The typical question asks whether respondents favor the establishment of a Shari'a state. Over the past fifteen years, these surveys have received response rates ranging between five and twenty-five percent in favor of such a state. However, these results are extremely problematic, because they do not provide any context or meaning for “the establishment of a Shari'a state,” either for those who favor it or for those who oppose it. This study begins to unpack the range of possible meanings attributed to Shari'a within Turkey, both among voters and among intellectuals, as a framework for future empirical studies and as a basis for deeper understandings of the role of Islam within Turkish law and politics.
1. See e.g., Ahmad, F., The Making of Modern Turkey (Routledge 1993)Google Scholar; Baran, Z., Torn Country: Turkey Between Secularism and Islamism (Hoover Institution Press 2010)Google Scholar; Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey (Bozdogan, & Kasaba, eds., Univ. Wash. Press 1997)Google Scholar; Çaǧaptay, S., Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who is a Turk? (Routledge 2006)Google Scholar; Cinar, A., Modernity, Islam, and Secularism in Turkey: Bodies, Places, and Time (Univ. Minn. Press 2005)Google Scholar; Davison, A., Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey: a Hermeneutic Reconsideration (Yale Univ. Press 1998)Google Scholar; Findley, C.V., Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity: a History, 1789-2007 (Yale Univ. Press 2010)Google Scholar; Navaro-Yashin, Y., Faces of The State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey (Princeton Univ. Press 2002)Google Scholar; Özyürek, Esra, Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey (Duke Univ. Press 2006)Google Scholar; Silverstein, B., Islam and Modernity In Turkey (Palgrave Macmillan 2011)Google Scholar; Turam, B., Between Islam and the State: the Politics of Engagement (Stanford Univ. Press 2007)Google Scholar; Yavuz, M.H., Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (Oxford Univ. Press 2003)Google Scholar; Zürcher, E.J., Turkey: A Modern History (I.B. Tauris 2004)Google Scholar.
2. See, e.g., Çarkoǧlu, A. & Toprak, Binnazet al., Religion, Society and Politics in A Changing Turkey (Tesev 2007)Google Scholar.
3. Id. at 33.
4. Id.
5. See e.g., Findley, supra note 1, at 91-106.
6. The Constitution of the Republic of Turkey Nov. 7, 1982 preamble (as amended) The recognition that no protection shall be accorded to an activity contrary to Turkish national interests, the principle of the indivisibility of the existence of Turkey with its state and territory, Turkish historical and moral values or the nationalism, principles, reforms and modernism of Atatiirk and that, as required by the principle of secularism, there shall be no interference whatsoever by sacred religious feelings in state affairs and politics …
7. See Turkish Key Constitutional Reforms Annulled by Court, BBC Online (July 7, 2010), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10547710.
8. See Tuǧal, C., Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism 42–49 (Stanford Univ. Press 2009)Google Scholar.
9. Özal from ANAP (The Motherland Party) and Demirel from the Doǧru Yol (The True Path Party) were the leading politicians in the transition from the 1980 Coup to the end of the 20th century. Both held to a center right political position, particularly with regard to market reforms and economic liberalization. Both also maintained a public piety which won support from some voters who desired a greater public role for Islam. By the mid-90s, their parties lost influence to expressly Islamist parties (Refah in particular), but their centrist political and economic positions were later adopted by former Refah leaders who formed the AKP. See, e.g., Findley, supra note 1, at 351-59, and Tugǧal, supra note 8, at 41-46.
10. Yavuz, M. Hakan, Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey 108 (Oxford 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11. See generally Özyürek, supra note 1, and Yavuz, supra note 10, at 95 (“One of the key unifying factors among the leadership of the AKP is a powerful conviction that the Ottoman past holds the key to the future of Turkey. … This reconstruction of Ottoman identity has been at work for the last three decades and has recently been articulated in art, literature, cuisine and politics.”).
12. Kalaycioǧlu, Ersin, Party Identification, Islam and Secularism in Turkey, Sabanci University Research Database (2008), http://isanet.ccit.arizona.edu/sanfran2008/PreliminaryProgram.pdfGoogle Scholar.
13. Çarkoǧlu, supra note 2.
14. Yilmaz, Hakan, In Search of a Turkish Middle Class: Economic Occupations, Political Orientations, Social Life-Styles, Moral Values (2008), found at http://hakanyilmaz.info/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/HakanYilmaz-2007-MiddleClassInTurkey-Summary.28470755.pdfGoogle Scholar.
15. White, Jenny B., Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (Univ. Wash. Press 2002)Google Scholar.
16. Tuǧal, supra note 8.
17. ÇARKOǧLU, supra note 2.
18. Id. at 13.
19. Id.
20. Id. at 13-14.
21. Id. at 14-15.
22. Kalaycioǧlu, supra note 12, at 5 & 17.
23. Id. at 14-16.
24. Id. at 4-6.
25. Id.
26. Id. at 2.
27. Id. at 17-18.
28. Id.
29. Yilmaz, supra note 14.
30. Id. at 6.
31. Id. at 3-7.
32. World Values Survey Association. World Values Survey 2005 (2005).
33. World Values Survey Association. World Values Survey 1981-2008 Official Aggregate v.20090901, 2009. (www.worldvaluessurvey.org). Aggregate File Producer: ASEP/JDS, Madrid, available at http://www.wvsevsdb.com/wvs/WVSData.jsp.
34. White, supra note 15, at ix-xi.
35. Id. at 27.
36. Id. at 242.
37. Tuǧal, supra note 8, at 14-15.
38. Id. at 140-44.
39. See id. at 60-77 and 137-44.
40. Id. at 217-25.
41. See, e.g., Çarkoǧlu supra note 2, at 13.
42. I define “softer secularism” as a legal framework emphasizing free exercise of religion and non-establishment (as in the United States) as opposed to many civil law traditions (such as Mexico, France or Turkey) which attempt state control of religious institutions. See generally Kuru, A. T., Secularism and State Policies Toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey (Cambridge Univ. Press 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43. See Kalaycioǧlu, supra note 12 and World Values Survey, supra note 32.
44. See, e.g., Findley supra note 1, at 251-53.
45. See Tuǧal, supra note 16, at 41-42.
46. Id. at 42-46.
47. See Findley, supra note 1, at 361-62.
48. See, e.g., Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (3d ed., Oxford Univ. Press 2002)Google Scholar.
49. Id. at 402-16.
50. White, supra note 15 at 24-27.
51. Tuǧal, supra note 8 at 51-56.
52. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im tends to take this position. See, e.g., An-Na'im, Abdullahi Ahmed, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari'a 1 (Harv. Univ. Press 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
53. Rippin, Andrew, Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices 74 (Hinnels, John & Smart, Ninian eds., 3d ed., Routledge 2005)Google Scholar.
54. Lombardi, Clark B., State law as Islamic Law in Modern Egypt: The Incorporation of the Shari'a Into Egyptian Constitutional Law, in 19 Studies in Islamic Law and Society 11 (Peters, Ruud & Weiss, Bernard eds., Brill 2006)Google Scholar.
55. See Rippin, supra note 53, at 79; Hallaq, Wael B., A History of Islamic Legal Theories: an Introduction to Sunni Usul al-Fiqh (Cambridge Univ. Press 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56. Lombardi, supra note 54, at 15.
57. Id. at 13-17.
58. Gerber, Haim, Rigidity versus Openness in Late Classical Islamic Law: The Case of the Seventeenth-Century Palestinian Muftī Khayr al-Dīn al-Ramlī, 5 Islamic Law and Society 165, 166 (1998)Google Scholar; Fadel, Mohammad, The Social Logic of Taqlīd and the Rise of the Mukhatasar, in 3 Islamic L. and Soc'y 193, 194 (1996)Google Scholar; Hallaq, supra note 55, at 121-23.
59. Kamali, Mohammad Hashim, Shari'ah Law: An Introduction 155 (Oneworld 2008)Google Scholar.
60. Fadel, supra note 58, at 193.
61. Id.
62. Id.
63. Johansen, Baber, A Perfect Law in an Imperfect Society: Ibn Taymiyya's Concept of “Governance in the Name of the Sacred Law, “ in The Law Applied: Contextualizing the Islamic Shari'a 259, 261 (Bearman, Periet al. eds., I.B. Tauris 2008)Google Scholar.
64. Lombardi, supra note 54, at 49.
65. Id. at 50.
66. Id. at 51.
67. Powers, David, Four Cases Relating to Women and Divorce in al-Andalus and the Maghrib, 1100-1500, in Dispensing Justice in Islam: Qadis and Their Judgments 383 (Masud, Muhammad Khalidet al. eds., Brill 2006)Google Scholar.
68. Akarh, Engin Deniz, Law in the Marketplace: Istanbul, 1730-1840, in Dispensing Justice in Islam: Qadis and Their Judgments 245 (Masud, Muhammad Khalidet al. eds., Brill 2006)Google Scholar; Peirce, Leslie, Book Review, 2 Islamic Law and Society 365 (1995)Google Scholar (reviewing Haim Gerber, State, Society, and Law in Islam: Ottoman Law in Comparative Perspective (1994)).
69. This is a term coined by Lombardi, supra note 54, at 83-92 (narrowing the range of fixed textual rules to the Qur'an, Hadith of certain meaning and transmission, and the ijma of the Companions).
70. Id. at 92-97 (extrapolating universal principles from the rules of the madhabs which then become the basis for legal rules).
71. Feener, R. Michael, Muslim Legal Thought in Modern Indonesia: Introduction and Overview, in Islamic Law in Contemporary Indonesia: Ideas and Institutions 13, 14–25 (Cammack, Mark E. & Feener, R. Michael eds., Harv. Univ. Press 2007)Google Scholar.
72. By a Muslim civil society, I mean, institutions and relationships that organize social life between the state and family or individual, including guilds, associations, etc.
73. By Islamic public sphere, I mean a social space fostering the ability to organize actions within collective discourses, with the aim of basing politics on reason rather than power alone.
74. Brown, Daniel W., Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought 41 (Cambridge Univ. Press 1996)Google Scholar.
75. Nafi, Basheer M., The Rise of Islamic Reformist Thought and its Challenge to Traditional Islam, in Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century 28, 30–32 (Taji-Farouki, Suha & Nafi, Basheer M. eds., I.B. Tauris 2004)Google Scholar.
76. Brown, supra note 74, at 20.
77. This argument is discussed in greater detail infra at Section III.
78. Nafi, supra note 75, at 30-32.
79. Brown, supra note 74; Asad, Talal, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity 219 (Stan. Univ. Press 2003)Google Scholar.
80. See generally Opwiss, Felicitas Meta Maria, Maslaha and the Purpose of the Law: Islamic Discourse on Legal Change from the 4th/10th to 8th/14th Century (Brill 2010)Google Scholar.
81. Lombardi, supra note 54, at 93.
82. See Hill, Enid, Al-Sanhuri and Islamic Law: The Place and Significance of Islamic Law in the Life and Work of ‘Abd al-Razzaq Ahmad al-Sanhuri, Egyptian jurist And Scholar 1895-1971 (Amer. Univ. in Cairo 1987)Google Scholar.
83. Id.
84. Metcalf, Barbara D., “Remaking Ourselves”: Islamic Self-Fashioning in a Global Movement of Spiritual Renewal, in 4 Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements 706 (Marty, Martin E.et al. eds., Univ. Chi. Press 1994)Google Scholar.
85. Devji, Faisal, Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity 15–32 (Cornell Univ. Press 2005)Google Scholar.
86. Sunier, Thijl, et. al, Diyanet: The Turkish Directorate for Religious Affairs in a Changing Environment 88–102 (Universities of Amsterdam & Utrecht 2011) found at http://www.fsw.vu.nl/nl/Images/Final%/2Oreport%/20Divanet%20February%/202011_tcm30-200229.pdfGoogle Scholar.
87. For Diyanet's view, see Sunier, supra note 86, at 97-98; for Özturk & Gülen, see Sections V.b. and c. infra.
88. Note that I do not consider here the arguably more heterodox approaches of the Naqshbandiyya, the Mevlevi, or the Alevi.
89. The Constitution of the Republic of Turkey Nov. 7, 1982 Art. 136 (as amended).
90. Sunier, supra note 86, at 51-52.
91. Id. at 9-20.
93. Diyanet maintains a collection of its fatwas and even offers a phone service to answer religious questions. See http://kurul.diyanet.gov.tr/sorusor/diyanet/default.aspx.
94. See the Diyanet website for a discussion of clergy and Islam, at http://www.diyanet.gov.tr/turkish/ingilizce/icerik.aspx?IID=310.
95. See Badran, Margot, The Religious Face of Secularism, Al-Ahram (02 7, 2001) available at http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2001/519/intrvw.htmGoogle Scholar.
96. See Öztürk, Yaşar Nuri, Reconstruction of Religious Life in Islam: Returning to the Quran (Yeni Boyut 1999)Google Scholar.
97. Tuǧal, supra note 8, at 82-90.
98. Translated by the author.
99. Hallaq, Wael B., Shari'a: Theory, Practice, Transformations 444–50 (Cambridge Univ. Press 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
100. See generally Öztürk, Yaşar Nuri, Kur'an Verileri Aç Isindan Laiklik (Yeni Boyut 2003)Google Scholar.
101. See generally Öztürk, Yaş;ar Nuri, Kur'An'daki Islam (Yeni Boyut 2008)Google Scholar.
102. Özturk, supra note 100, at 5-11.
103. Id. at 66-69.
104. Id. at 82.
105. Id. at 104-05.
106. Id. at 92.
107. Id. at 85.
108. Özturk, supra note 100, at 85-87.
109. Id. at 88.
110. Id.
111. Hallaq, supra note 99, at 443-50.
112. Id.
113. See Öztürk, supra note 100, at 104-05.
114. Hallaq, Wael B., An Introduction to Islamic Law (Cambridge Univ. Press 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
115. See Rahman, Fazlur, Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (Univ. Chi. Press 1982)Google Scholar (describes his “double movement” theory of Quranic exegesis).
116. Oztürk, supra note 100, at 82.
117. See, e.g., Bednarz, Dieter & Steinvorth, Daniel, “The Theologians Working Toward a Euro-Islam” Der Spiegel found at http://www.spiegel.de/intemational/europe/muslim-martin-luthers-the-theologians-working-towards-a-euro-islam-a-548970-4.htmlGoogle Scholar.
118. Yavuz, M. Hakan, The Gülen Movement: The Turkish Puritans, in Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gülen Movement 19, 30–47 (Yavuz, M. Hakan & Esposito, John L. eds., Syracuse Univ. Press 2003)Google Scholar.
119. Said Nursi (1876-1960) was a prominent Islamic thinker in the early decades of the Turkish Republic.
120. See, e.g., Gülen, Fethullah, Toward a Global Civilization of Love and Tolerance 133–68 (The Light 2004)Google Scholar (an extensive discussion of the role and applicability of Sufi thought for contemporary Muslims).
121. Kura, Ahmet T., Fethullah Gülen's Search for a Middle Way Between Modernity and Muslim Tradition, in Turkish Islam and the Secular State: The Gülen Movement 115, at 126 (Yavuz, M. Hakan & Esposito, John L. eds., Syracuse Univ. Press 2003)Google Scholar.
122. Yilmaz, Ihsan, Ijtihad and Tajdid by Conduct: The Gulen Movement, in Turkish Islam and The Secular State: The Gulen Movement 200 (Yavuz, M. Hakan & Esposito, John L. eds., Syracuse Univ. Press 2005)Google Scholar; See also Yilmaz, Ihsan, Muslim Laws, Politics and Society in Modern Nation States: Dynamic Legal Pluralisms in England, Turkey and Pakistan (Ashgate 2005)Google Scholar.
123. Id. at 224 (“In Gülen's philosophy, secularism is not understood as a non-Muslim way of life. The separation between sacred and profane and the projection of secularism onto social life are acceptable.”).
124. Id. (“Gülen argues that democracy, in spite of its many shortcomings, is now the only viable political system and that people should strive to modernize and consolidate democratic institutions in order to build a society where individuals rights and freedoms are respected and protected, where equal opportunity for all is more than a dream.”).
125. Id. at 224-28.
126. See, e.g., Yavuz, M. Sait, Women in Islam: Muslim Perspectives and Fethullah Gülen, available at http://en.fgulen.com/conference-papers/gulen-conference-in-washington-dc/3112-women-in-islam-muslim-perspectives-and-fethullah-gulenGoogle Scholar.
127. Yilmaz, supra note 122, at 221-23.
128. Id.; see also Acar, Ismail, A classical scholar with a modem outlook: Fethullah Güllen and his legal thought, in Mastering Knowledge in Modern Times: Fethullah Gulen as an Islamic Scholar 65, 71–84 (Albayrak, Ismail ed., Blue Dome 2011)Google Scholar.
129. Yavuz, supra note 118, at 28.
130. See Report of the Commission Appointed to Draft the Mejelle, 1 Arab Law Q. 367–72 (08 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; See also Findley, supra note 1, at 94.
