CHANGING PERSPECTIVES ON ISLAMISM AND SECULARISM IN TURKEY: THE GÜLEN MOVEMENT AND THE AK PARTY
Authors: Kuru Ahmet T. 
Published: September 2022

The debate between secularists and Islamic groups, a conspicuous feature of Turkish politics for decades, changed in the late 1990s when the political discourse of mainstream Islamic groups embraced secularism. The establishment elite advocate the existing French model of an ‘assertive secularism’, meaning that, in the public domain, the state supports only the ex- pression of a secular worldview, and formally excludes religion and religious symbols from that domain. The pro-Islamic conservatives, on the other hand, favour the American model of ‘passive secularism’, in which the state permits the expression of religion in the public do- main. In short, what Turkey has witnessed over the last decade is no longer a tussle between secularism and Islamism, but between two brands of secularism. Two actors have played crucial roles in this transformation: the Gülen movement and the Justice and Development (AK) Party. Recently the Gülen movement became an international actor and a defendant of passive secularism. Similarly, although the AK Party was originated from an Islamist Milli Görüş (National Outlook) movement, it is now a keen supporter of Turkey’s membership to the European Union and defends (passive) secularist, democratic regime. This paper analyses the transformation of these important social and political actors with regard to certain structural conditions, as well as the interactions between them.In April 2007, the international media covered Turkey for the protest meetings of more than a million people in three major cities, the military intervention to politics, and the abortive presidential election. According to several journalists and columnists, Turkey was experienc- ing another phase of the ongoing tension between the secularists and Islamists. Some major Turkish newspapers, such as Hürriyet, were asserting that the secularists finally achieved to bring together millions of opponents of the ruling Adalet ve Kalkınma (Justice and Development) (AK) Party. In addition to their dominance in military and judicial bureauc- racy, the secularists appeared to be maintaining the support of the majority of the people. The parliamentary elections that took place few months later, in July, revealed that the main- stream Turkish media’s presentation was misleading and the so-called secularists’ aspira- tions were unrealistic. The AK Party received 47 percent of the national votes, an unusual ratio for a multiparty system where there were 14 contesting parties. The main opposition, Cumhuriyet Halk (Republican People’s) Party (CHP), only received 21 percent of the votes, despite its alliance with the other leftist party. Both the national and international media’s misleading presentation of Turkish politics was not confined by the preferences of the vot- ers. Moreover, the media was primarily misleading with its use of the terms “Islamists” and “secularists.” What Turkey has witnessed for the last decade has not been a struggle between secularism and Islamism; but it has been a conflict between two types of secularism. As I elaborated else- where, the AK Party is not an Islamist party. It defends a particular understanding of secular- ism that differs from that of the CHP. Although several leaders of the AK Party historically belonged to an Islamist -Milli Görüş (National Outlook)- movement, they later experienced an ideational transformation and embraced a certain type of secularism that tolerates public visibility of religion. This transformation was not an isolated event, but part of a larger expe- rience that several other Islamic groups took part in. I argue that the AKP leaders’ interaction with the Gülen movement, in this regard, played an important role in the formation of the party’s new perspective toward secularism. In another article, I analyzed the transformation of the AK Party and Gülen movement with certain external (globalization process) and internal (the February 28 coup) conditions. In this essay, I will focus on the interaction between these two entities to explore their changing perspectives. I will first discuss the two different types of secularism that the Kemalists and conservatives defend in Turkey. Then, I will briefly summarize diverse discourses of the Milli Görüş and Gülen movements. Finally, I will examine the exchanges between the Gülen movement and the AK Party with regard to their rethinking of Islamism and secularism.