The State, Religious Communities, Sufi Orders, and the Second Kemalism

The State, Religious Communities, Sufi Orders, and the Second Kemalism

Socio-political developments that have profoundly unsettled life in Turkey show no sign of abating. On the one hand, the secular-Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) is being targeted; on the other, certain Islamic groups are being subjected to political, financial, and psychological operations. Last week, an operation targeting the Süleymancılar, one of Turkey’s largest Islamic communities, became one of the leading items on the national agenda.

To properly understand these developments, we need to examine the sociological phenomena that shape religious life in Turkey. In the broadest sense, Islamic formations can be classified into three main groups:

1. Traditional Sufi orders (tariqahs) with deep historical roots.
2. Religious communities (cemaatler) that emerged through the efforts of particular individuals during the early Republican period, between 1923 and 1950, developed into broader social phenomena after 1950, and continue to exist today.
3. Movements of various sizes that are neither Sufi orders nor religious communities but have emerged as tightly organized groups with strong internal discipline.

The first category includes a range of Sufi orders, from İsmailağa and İskenderpaşa to Menzil. These orders have extensive social influence. They have long commanded sizable electoral constituencies, and with the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) coming to power, they have acquired significant socioeconomic influence and power.

Similarly, religious communities that lack historical roots and Sufi traditions, but emerged during the Republican era as a reaction to severe Kemalist repression by the state, constitute important phenomena in Turkey’s religious life. Two major communities that emerged during Turkey’s oppressive single-party era between 1923 and 1960 and continue to exist today are the Nur movement and the Süleymancılar. Although not comparable to these two in size, the Işıkçılar may also be included in this category because of their political and economic influence.

Although the Nur movement has developed into several different branches, its common founding figure is Said Nursi. Across its various manifestations, the Nur communities take as their principal reference Nursi’s Risale-i Nur, which, in modern times, effectively redefined faith as a transformative force. Said Nursi (d. 1960) believed that a Qur’an-centered movement of faith could resist the positivism imposed by the Kemalist administration and the repression exercised through the coercive instruments of the state. Despite extremely difficult circumstances, the Nur movement did indeed succeed and gained broad social support.

The Süleymancı movement, which is currently being subjected to operations, was initiated by Süleyman Tunahan (d. 1959). His primary concern was to preserve society’s relationship with the Qur’an during a period of severe repression. For this reason, he attached great importance to Qur’an courses and to memorizing, reading, and learning the Qur’an.

Initially, Tunahan opened courses discreetly on the outskirts of cities. When these courses came under surveillance by the gendarmerie and police, he would suspend them and attempt to teach his students the Qur’an during intercity train journeys. At other times, students would disguise themselves as farmers in remote fields and continue their Qur’anic lessons there. After repression eased in the 1950s, Qur’anic education continued through legally established courses. Although the Süleymancılar contain a certain Sufi-Nakshbandi current, sociologically they resemble a religious community more than a Sufi order.

The movements I identified as belonging to the third category were organized primarily at the intellectual level. Some concentrated on art and literature, others on intellectual and mental transformation, some on activist initiatives, and still others sought to acquire influence in academia.

Broadly speaking, Sufi orders and religious communities may be grouped under the category of Social Islam; those that establish political parties and engage directly in politics under Political Islam; and intellectual and cultural movements under Cultural Islam. This does not mean, however, that there has been no movement between these three spheres.

With the advent of multiparty politics, the principal political preferences of the Nur communities and the Süleymancılar were generally right-wing, conservative, and nationalist parties. Their strategy was based on negotiations confined largely to election periods. For example, under an arrangement between the Justice Party (AP) and a religious community, if the two sides agreed that one hundred courses would be opened over four years, the party would keep its promise and turn a blind eye to the establishment of those courses, while the community would refrain from interfering in politics. Sometimes the party would bring one of the community’s symbolic figures into Parliament as a deputy.

This was an entirely healthy democratic practice. In democratic societies, pressure groups and interest groups negotiate with parties seeking political power; once an agreement is reached, these social formations continue their activities within their respective spheres of civil society. Kemalists, however, do not recognize Sufi orders and religious communities as “civil society.” According to their conception, the first condition of civil society is that it must be non-religious; consequently, religious sociologies organized at one level or another are expected to be eliminated by the state.

In terms of its founding ideology, Turkey has two principal “Others”: the Kurds, whose identities and language were denied, and religious/Islamic groups that maintain a social, economic, and political presence.

The tradition of democratic bargaining that began with multiparty politics underwent a qualitative transformation with the establishment of the AK Party.

Until the beginning of the twenty-first century, not all religious/Islamic groups followed the path of Sufi orders and religious communities in terms of the objectives they pursued. Among them were groups with long-term political objectives that nevertheless sought, under the conditions of the time, to develop competence in spheres outside formal politics. One of the most interesting of these, though little known to the general public, was the Yeminliler Group.

While the Nur communities confined themselves largely to social activities centered on faith through the Risale-i Nur, the Süleymancılar to activities centered on the Qur’an, and the Sufi orders to the practice of traditional Sufi rituals, the Yeminliler pursued much longer-term political objectives. Indeed, among religious-Islamic movements, this group appears to have been the most successful to date.

The Yeminliler’s strategy was based on the objective of educating a generation through Imam Hatip schools and Higher Islamic Institutes/Faculties of Theology that would one day attain political power. The Yeminliler were clearly opposed to the Milli Görüş (National Outlook) movement, the Nur communities, and the Süleymancılar. They were also distant from the Sufi orders. However, since the orders generally lacked explicit political objectives—with the later exception of the relationship established between the Nakshbandi İskenderpaşa community and the Motherland Party (ANAP)—the Yeminliler were more concerned with criticizing Sufism from the standpoint of Islamic creed.

Because the Yeminliler were primarily organized within academia, they tended to look down on the Nur communities and the Süleymancılar, both of which had developed into popular movements. Their tolerance toward the Süleymancılar in particular was virtually nonexistent. This was partly the product of the mutual perceptions and attitudes of the respective groups.

The Süleymancılar maintained an explicit distance from both Imam Hatip schools and the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), believing that the Qur’an could not truly be served through these two institutions. The Yeminliler, by contrast, concentrated their activities precisely in two principal arenas: Imam Hatip schools/Faculties of Theology and the Presidency of Religious Affairs. The Yeminliler used to say that Turkey would be saved if an Imam Hatip graduate one day became prime minister.

Their attitude toward Milli Görüş, and particularly toward Necmettin Erbakan, was not difficult to understand. Erbakan also attached great importance to Imam Hatip schools, while the Yeminliler did not want Milli Görüş to penetrate this sphere. Moreover, although the Yeminliler’s discourse contained an unmistakable Islamist dimension, they were Turkish nationalists, and they have not lost this reflex today.

Because their political inclination was nationalist, the Yeminliler felt an affinity with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Among the existing groups, the Yeminliler are perhaps the one that can most clearly be said to have achieved its objective: the AK Party, whose leader came from an Imam Hatip background, has been in power for nearly a quarter of a century, while for the past decade the AK Party and the Turkish-nationalist MHP have governed the country together.

Today, the case being prepared against the Süleymancılar centers on allegations of “organized financial crimes,” “corruption,” “money laundering,” “extraordinary cash movements through highly capitalized companies,” and “irregularities involving commercial transactions worth billions of Turkish lira.”

It is not difficult to anticipate how the legal and judicial dimensions of the case will unfold. In the context discussed here, however, an important issue is why relations between religious communities and the state have failed to develop on a healthy foundation.

From the perspective of the state, the cadre that founded the Republic was itself a cemaat—a community—and it eliminated competing communities. Because of the structural nature of the state apparatus, whoever gained control over it subsequently governed that apparatus with the consciousness and practices of a cemaat. By cemaat, I do not mean only groups with religious references. Secular groups also constitute communities of this kind and conduct their political struggles with a communal consciousness.

Ottoman political life consisted largely of struggles among beys for power. The victorious bey eliminated the others; someone who wielded power one day could lose his head the next. Modern politics, too, has been shaped by “struggles for power among communities,” with cemaatler replacing the beys.

The state needs these communities. It monitors them from both within and without, and when they exceed a certain level of development, it cuts them down. Yet a community targeted by the state is unlikely to receive support from the others. Almost all of them side with the state, producing countless justifications along the lines of: “Their religious understanding and ideology were deviant anyway,” or “They committed such-and-such offenses.”

Of course, some of the arguments they invoke to legitimize their position may be justified. The central issue, however, is that those who rush toward a fallen tree with axes in their hands forget the most fundamental principles of law: the crimes of individuals cannot serve as the basis for collective or corporate punishment; punishment must correspond to the nature of the offense; property belonging to private individuals cannot simply be confiscated; and so forth.

This phenomenon keeps alive, within virtually every cemaat, the aspiration to capture the “state apparatus” or at least to acquire the highest possible degree of influence over it. Its other consequence is that competition among communities becomes ruthless and merciless.

Three factors can be said to play a role in this:

1. The theological/doctrinal factor: A community’s appropriation of truth, correctness, and benefit as its exclusive possession.
2. The social-psychological factor: The sense of security and solidarity generated by acting collectively on the basis of one form of asabiyyah or another—religious interpretation, sect, ethnicity, region, ideology/doctrine, and so forth.
3. The political factor concerning the state and political power: The indivisibility of the power toward which struggle and competition are directed, together with the unwillingness of existing social formations to regard the sharing of that power as legitimate.

Time and again, Kemalism is able—depending on the circumstances of a given period—to return to its founding ideology. In this way, the founding ideology restores itself through the cadres of one religious or secular community or another.

The founding ideology does not leave those who serve it unrewarded. It distributes abundant benefits among the cadres that serve it, but this does not mean that the popular constituencies of those religious or secular communities benefit from those rewards.

In this manner, the administrative-political system perpetuates itself either directly through military coups or through the instrumentality of the judiciary.