The Togetherness of Minarets and Golden Arches: A Neo- Gramscian Approach to the Rise of Political Islam in Turkey under Neoliberal Paradigm

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1 The Togetherness of Minarets and Golden Arches: A Neo- Gramscian Approach to the Rise of Political Islam in Turkey under Neoliberal Paradigm Gorkem Altinors, MA, BA (Paper presented at Political Economy and the Outlook for Capitalism, organised by AHE, IIPPE and FAPE, 5-7 July 2012, at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris, France) Introduction [Please do not cite without permission] This study will investigate the neoliberal transformation of state and capital that has been observed in Turkey since 1980 and will try to construct a neo-gramscian explanation to the rise of political Islam in the light of this transformation. The research aims to demonstrate how the coup d etat of 1980 was effective to employ the neoliberal paradigm in Turkey and how it forced the social, political and economic structure of Turkey to be transformed. Briefly, the coup d etat can be accepted as an anti-leftist intervention due to its neoliberal outcomes. Furthermore, the neoliberalisation of economy has provided an environment to the Anatolian capital to be developed and create their political power. This development on capital brings us to the conservatisation of the state and the rise of a pro-islamic political party. This research will point out the relationship between the coup d etat and the rise of political Islam within the transformation of state and capital by using neo-gramscian arguments, therefore the study will focus on the role of international coercion among Turkey within the neoliberal transformation process. Historical Background The rise of Political Islam in Turkey has become a new phenomenon for the last decade. But it should not be analysed by only considering that period. The historical course of the political economy of Turkey embodies the blueprints of this fact. As it has been known, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) won the election by landslide in It was the first time in the history of modern Turkey that a pro-islamic party came into power as a single-party government. This dominant situation has been strengtheningly sustained in the following elections of 2007 and The assumption that accepts 2002 as a milestone for the rise of political Islam in Turkey can be described as a superficial analysis due to the rise cannot be thought without the transformation of state and capital. This transformation can be traced to the coup d etat of Since 1980, capitalist class has started to play a dominant role in the making of new Turkey as it was the winner of the hegemonic struggle of the 1970s. In addition, the capitalist class itself has been transformed as well. The intervention of military junta against the leftist movements cannot be thought as a coincidence. The reason that the highest level of union density in the history of Turkey was realised in 1979 (Cam, 2002: 97) is the existence of strong leftist movements in the 1960s and 1970s. The constitution of 1961 which can be accepted as the most politically libertarian constitution of the history of Turkish 1

2 constitutionalism, established a free political and social environment that people participate to the politics. Therefore, especially workers and students found a good opportunity to make themselves heard by people. Also, they were represented in the parliament. In 1965, the TİP (Workers Party of Turkey) obtained 15 seats in the parliament. It can be claimed that the 1960s were the golden years of the left in Turkey. But starting with the amendments in the constitution in the early 1970s and continued with the military coup of 1980, the left wing had become a target of interventions from the state and the capital. In order to establish the neoliberal creed, the influence of leftist movements should have been diminished. So, as Aydın asserts the coup d état of 1980 represents a milestone for the integration of Turkey into the world economy. Within the auspices of the military junta, the IMF and the World Bank began to have a strong influence on the arena of Turkish policymaking. Thereafter the coup d état, a three-year stand-by agreement was signed by the government that is engaged with the military junta in This agreement could be assumed as the end of the Turkish national sovereignty on the Turkish policy making process. The legislative functions of the Turkish Parliament were bypassed with the implementation of the performance criteria for the fiscal and monetary policies and these functions of the Parliament were canalised to the Bretton Woods institutions. The decision-making process was centralised to the government in which these institutions have been embedded (Aydın, 2005: 43). Various specific policies have been applied since the early 1980s in order to transform the economy of Turkey. This process covers a transition from a state-dominated and protectionist model to a marketoriented model via liberalisation of trade, privatisation of state-oriented enterprises and increasing competitiveness (Atasoy, 2009: 1). The Bretton Woods institutions have implemented a reinstitution process towards the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries within the neoliberalisation paradigm. According to this process the capital structure of countries have been redesigned in order to realise the passive revolution. This includes the redistribution of the capital. Inside this, the relation between culture and capital has been changed. In Turkey, the political Islam has arisen within this context. A new type of bourgeoisie has been risen during the 1990s in accordance with this reinstitution of the relation between capital and culture. This new bourgeoisie can be denoted as authentic bourgeoisie (Laçiner, 2007) and the conventional one can be described as comprador bourgeoisie. Because the conventional bourgeoisie of Turkey had been arisen from the etatist (statist) policies of the young Republic in the pre-1970s period. Therefore, the Istanbul-based bourgeoisie has been etatist and secular. The authentic bourgeoisie is based on the Anatolian tigers (this term is used for non-istanbul-based enterprises) and they embody the authentic features of the Anatolia such as being religious. This competition of the authentic and comprador bourgeoisie also occurs at the institutional platform. TÜSİAD is the organisation for the Istanbul-based companies, and MÜSİAD (Organisation of Independent Industrialists and Businessmen) consists of the Anatolian tigers. It can be assumed that, MÜSİAD is the result of bourgeoisification of Anatolian employers (Bugra, 1998). To sum up, the phenomenon of rising political Islam in Turkey can be traced back to the 1980s. The neoliberal transformation policies which include the privatisation of state oriented companies, liberalisation of trade, cuts on public spending, controlling wages, deunionised working life and the shift from agriculture to industry, brought a new fact with themselves that is passive revolutions. In Turkey, this fact has occurred within a trasformismo that consists of authentic bourgeoisie and international powers such as the IMF and the EU. It has been also upheld by the global phenomenon of the state transformation from national to neoliberal. Therefore, a 2

3 new and strong ideology, political Islam had risen in Turkey. The togetherness of neoliberalist coercion from outside and authenticity of the Islam makes the ideology stronger. Theoretical Framework As Bedirhanoğlu and Yalman point out neoliberal transformation processes in different countries have been assumed as passive revolutions by several Gramscian studies. Here, passive revolution represents a slow and top-down social transformation with the hands of a cooperation of different classes over the political scene in the name of trasformismo (Bedirhanoğlu and Yalman, 2010: 109) which attempts to assimilate or dissolve the opposition via policies that applied without suppression of organised working class (Morton, 2007). After the coup d état of 1980, a new ideology was risen which is a synthesis of Ottoman Islam, Turkish popular culture and an emphasis on the dangers of ideological fragmentation. In Gramscian way of thinking, it can be assumed that family, mosque and military barracks have become the privileged institutions as a new historic bloc (Dikici Bilgin, 2009: ). The political Islam as a political project has risen due to the absence of a strong Leftist movement in Turkey. Although one of the reasons of this absence is the antipathy of people to the vulgar Marxism, the role of the military junta is extremely important in this context. This political Islamism covers a strong counter movement against Kemalist developmentalism, Kemalist secularism and the Istanbul-based bourgeoisie which accompanies Kemalist developmentalism. This Kemalist paradigm embodies the authoritarian and homogenised culture of civil military state bureaucrats (Atasoy, 2009: 108). There is a number of reason for the absence of a strong Leftist movement in Turkey. But, the coup d état of 1980 can be accepted as the fundamental reason of it. Within the global phenomenon of the paradigm shift towards neoliberalism, Turkish state applied the structural reform of 24 January 1980 in order not to be isolated from the global environment. The military coup accompanied this reform package after almost nine months. Thereafter, the junta had suppressed any fraction of Leftist actions in the following three years in order to create an unopposed environment for the governments that would maintain the reform package. Undoubtedly, the international coercionplayed a key role in this context. The letter of intent that was given to the IMF by the government before the coup d etat shows us the dominant classes of Turkey and the government were the part of this coercion. This agreement between internal and external dominant powers brings the Gramscian term trasformismo to the mind. In order to make a comprehensive analysis of the political positioning of Islamic groups against the power players of the old Kemalist state, the Gramscian term of war of positions should be highlighted. Although they are against it, the Islamic groups share the same prodevelopmentalist bias with the Kemalist State because of not only their ideological structure of Turkish Islam but also their internationalisation of developmentalist ideology that obstructs their attempt to create a cultural hegemony in the state. Therefore, this situation led them to the foundation of their emergence as a neo-bourgeoisie. Culturally, this new class is different from the secular one. However, there is still an absence of power to create hegemony. This creating of hegemony is really crucial for them in order to maintain a system of social reconstruction managing via the apparatuses of state which are coercion and consent. In this context, there are two main bases of the environment of political Islam. First, the growing Islamic mobilisation via the democratisation packages of the EU negotiations; and the second, reinstitution of the relation between culture and capital in the context of neoliberalism (Atasoy, 2009b: 123). The military coup of 1980 signified not only a change in 3

4 the political regime but also a change in the form of the state which maintains itself despite the return to civilian government within the confines of an authoritarian constitution put into effect by the referendum in 1982 (Yalman, 2009: 298). Research Questions 1 - To what extent the international coercion is successful to employ the neoliberal paradigm in Turkey? How did international organisations as an apparatus of hegemonic world order start to intervene to the Turkish politics? 2 - To what extent the neoliberal transformation of state and capital is significative on the rise of political Islam in Turkey? Is there any relationship between neoliberal transformation and the decline of Kemalist ideology? 3 - Is the AKP an inevitable result of the transformation of capital? How did a pro-islamic party dominate the current political environment in Turkey? 4 - How to apply Gramscian terms (such as hegemony, historic bloc, passive revolution, caesarism, trasformismo, structure and agency, and historical materialism) to the post-1980 politics of Turkey? Methodology First of all, in order to construct a strong historical background and theoretical framework, I will utilise the writings of key scholars. For the state theory, works of Cox (1987), Clarke (1991), Jessop (1990), Poulantzas (1978), Miliband (1969) will be used. In historical background, authors such as Keyder (1987), Korkut Boratav, Ziya Onis etc. will be utilised. Also some researchers (Ahmad (1993), Lewis (1961)) are going to be used for illustrating the history of the pre-1980s period. In order to highlight the neo-gramscian theory, the works of Robert W. Cox, Stephen Gill, Andreas Bieler, Adam David Morton, Kees van de Pijl are going to be investigated, Gramsci s own works will be used as well. Thereafter by using Gramscian terminology, the post-1980 politics of Turkey is going to be explained. Past studies (Atasoy (2009), Aydin (2005), Tugal (2009), Yalman (2009)) on the issue will be utilised. This investigation process will help the researcher to understand the theoretic basis and clarify the dynamics of Turkish politics. Therefore the study can be developed with strong arguments. Secondly, the arguments are formed at the reading process is going to be applied to the rise of political Islam. For instance, researcher will explain why the neoliberal development is a hegemonic process and why the rise of political Islam is the result of passive revolution. The authoritarian characteristic of the AKP will be introduced in the manner of caesarism. An analysis of international coercion in the light of structure and agency comparison will be carried out. Thirdly, some past newspapers will be reviewed. This review will focus on especially some particular periods such as (the military government period), 1989 (the presidency of Turgut Ozal), 1997 (the postmodern military intervention), 2007 (the electronic military intervention). This review will help us to explain how media and press started to be a part of historic bloc. 4

5 Significance of the Study The neoliberal transformation of Turkey is well studied by numerous scholars. But most of them (generally orthodox Marxist perspectives) are usually focused on the economic transformation rather than the impacts of the transformation on the political and social system. Actually it will be a mistake to make different analysis on economic, political and social transformation, since they are all interconnected. Therefore this study will be more overarching among them. Secondly, the rise of political Islam in Turkey is mistakenly accepted as a new phenomenon by the mainstream academia. Nevertheless, this fact is embedded in the neoliberal transformation and can be traced back to the early 1980s. Additionally, neo- Gramscian arguments are quite adequate to explain and introduce this occurrence due to it is not only evaluate the internal dynamics also include the role of international coercion to the analysis. Differently from mainstream studies, this study will assess the neoliberal transformation as a whole with neo-gramscian perspective and will correlate it with the rise of political Islam. Bibliography Ahmad, F. (1993) The Making of Modern Turkey, London and New York: Routledge Atasoy, Y. (2009) Islam s Marriage with Neoliberalism: State Transformation in Turkey, London: Palgrave Macmillan Aydın, Z. (2005) The Political Economy of Turkey, London: Pluto Press Bedirhanoğlu, P. and Yalman, G. L. (2010) State, Class and the Discourse: Reflections on the Neoliberal Transformation in Turkey, in Alfredo Saad-Filho and Galip L. Yalman (eds) Economic Transition to Neoliberalism in Middle-income Countries, London and New York: Routledge Bugra, A. (1998) Class, Culture, and State: An Analysis of Interest Representation by Two Turkish Business Associations, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Nov., 1998), pp Cam, S. (2002) Neo-liberalism and Labour Within the Context of an Emerging Market Economy - Turkey, Capital & Class, vol.26, no.2, Clarke, S. (1991) (ed) The State Debate, New York: Palgrave Cox, R. W. (1987) Production, Power, and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History, New York: Columbia University Press Keyder, Ç. (1987) State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development, London: Verso Dikici - Bilgin, H. (2009) Civil Society and State in Turkey: A Gramscian Perspective in Mark McNally and John Schwarzmantel (eds) Gramsci and Global Politics: Hegemony and Resistance, London: Routledge Jessop, B. (1990) State Theory: Putting the Capitalist State in its Place, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Laçiner, Ö. (2007) 27 Nisan Muhtırası, Seçimler: Aristokratlar ile Burjuvazi Mücadelesinde Son Aşamaya Doğru (Memorandum of 27th of April and Elections: Towards the Last Stage in the Struggle between Aristocrats and Bourgeoisie), Birikim, Vol. 218 (June 2008), pp. 3-9 Lewis, B. (1968) The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Oxford: Oxford University Press Miliband, R. (1969) The State in Capitalist Society, London : Quartet Books 5

6 Morton, A. D. (2007) Disputing the Geopolitics of the States System and Global Capitalism Cambridge Review of International Affairs, vol. 20, No. 4, Poulantzas, N. (1978) State, Power, Socialism, London: Verso Tuğal, C. (2009) Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challange to Capitalism Stanford, California: Stanford University Press Yalman, G. L. (2009) The Politics of Economics: Making Sense of the Structural Adjustment in the 1980s in Galip L. Yalman Transition to Neoliberalism: The Case of Turkey in the 1980s, İstanbul: İstanbul Bilgi University Press 6