Fast-paced neoliberal restructuring of the economy as well as a growing political authoritarianism during the last decade of AKP rule have been considerably transforming the state-civil society relationship and producing complex configurations of power, agency, and co-optation among Turkey’s non-state actors. Islamic voluntary associations, which constitute one of the fastest growing segments of civil society in this period, are assigned key roles in mediating, translating, and legitimizing the AKP government’s social and economic policies. Islamic civil society organizations partner with the state in offering protection of social rights and the delivery of services, promoting a patriarchal gender contract which considers family as the desired unit of women’s economic and social existence, and brokering business relationships to create alternative export markets. In return, the organizations enjoy privilege and favoritism in accessing political leadership channels, public funds, and tax exemptions. This complex chain of interdependencies results in a clientelistic relationship between the state, civil society, and the public. This paper analyzes the symbiotic relationship between the state and Islamic civil society organizations in Turkey. Civil society activism is typically considered a precursor for democratic change and diminished state power in the literature. Drawing from a year-long qualitative fieldwork on Islamic non-state actors in Turkey, I argue that non-governmental actors whose mere presence hinges on the availability of state funds and political opportunities do not necessarily facilitate democratic consolidation, but may reproduce non-democratic norms, values, and practices instead.

The Hizmet (“service”) movement—a faith-based philanthropic association established by followers of the influential Turkish preacher, Fethullah Gülen—is emblematic of the type of civil society organization that has interconnections with both private markets and Turkish state administration. While much attention has been paid to the ways in which Hizmet members have been involved with the Turkish government, this paper will instead focus on the intersections between private market interests and Hizmet social benevolence projects. Based on ethnographic research on the Hizmet movement in Turkey and the United States, this paper demonstrates how Gülen’s teachings have urged followers to turn wealth production into philanthropic activity in a process that follows the logic of social entrepreneurship (business ventures that emphasize social goals over profit production). Though the movement does provide opportunities for traditional charitable giving, Hizmet members have also launched numerous social enterprises. These include for-profit schools, Islamic banking and financial institutions, and international trade and business networks in which profits are turned toward socially transformational ends. This paper will discuss in particular how the development of schools in various locations have been coupled with investments in often unproven local businesses. These risky business ventures are implemented with the explicit social goal of encouraging the growth of the local economies, while profit-making is maintained as a long-term goal. This case is emblematic of the ever-more-prevalent forms of neoliberal philanthropy, where market mechanisms are used to address social problems. This case also allows us to rethink the notion of civil society less as a distinctive realm of social activity than as an intersection where various types of organizational expectations—state, market, social—play out.

In the literature on Islamic civil society in Turkey, the relationship between the state and civil society has mostly been evaluated through the lens of struggle, opposition, and contestation, and civil society has been viewed as the domain where Islamic political actors pose a challenge to the authoritarian character of the secular Turkish state (Göle 2001; Kadıoğlu 2005; Kalaycıoglu 2004; Seçkinelgin 2006; White 2002). This paper argues, however, that the dominant “civil society vs. state” binary framework should be reconsidered in the context of family-related Islamic civil society organizations (CSOs) which have recently become one of the major partners of the state in the conceptualization, production, and implementation of family-related social policies and projects. Since the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, there has been a proliferation of discourses on “family crisis” and the “decline of family values” as well as social programs and projects aimed at “strengthening the Turkish family.” What is novel about the configuration of the politics of the family under the AKP government is the extension of family governance beyond the formal institutions of the state and the deployment of religiously-inspired actors, institutions, and organizations. Within the past decade, there has been an explosion of family-related social projects designed and implemented by not only formal political institutions such as the Ministry of the Family and AKP-governed municipalities but also various Islamic CSOs. Based on twelve months of fieldwork, this paper will explore the particular domains of engagement between the state and Islamic civil society actors in shaping the politics of the family in contemporary Turkey. It will examine the ways in which Islamic CSOs have been instrumental in influencing politician’s discourses as well as state policies and projects on the family. It will primarily focus on how Islamic CSOs’ involvement in diverse spheres of knowledge production (such as conferences, workshops, symposia, and research activities) have helped to reinforce the notion of “family crisis” as the source of problems and risks that threaten the society. Such an emphasis on the crisis of the family has, in turn, served to legitimize the pedagogical projects and other forms of intervention into the family by the state, civil society organizations, and a variety of experts for the sake of developing and improving the capacities of families so that they can govern their own conduct more efficiently and effectively.

The changing nature of the political in Turkey over the past three decades has had a significant impact on the nation’s Romani (“Gypsy”) citizens. Economic liberalization, the pluralization of cultural identities, and the legalization of civil society organizations have created new opportunities for Turkey’s Roma to engage in public debates about national belonging, citizenship, and the role of civil society. What may be less obvious, and what I bring attention to in this paper, is the ways in which the Roma are in turn impacting the nature of the political in Turkey. Both the subject of local and international discourses regarding minority rights and the object of state and civil society interventions, the Roma are often referenced as a ‘litmus test’ for the success or failure of democratization. However, rather than demanding equal rights on the basis of minority status, Turkey’s Roma appeal to the republican ideal of equality for all Turkish citizens. Thick descriptions based on ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey serve to demonstrate the fragmented and contested nature of Romani identity in Turkey today and the central role that the politics of Romani citizenship plays in Turkey’s democratization process. Framing this issue in terms of a state – civil society divide, however, only reifies assumptions about national homogeneity and minority citizenship. Instead, Chatterjee’s concept of “political society” (2004) offers an alternative way to understand the role of the Roma in Turkey today, allowing us to rethink universality and global cosmopolitanism on the one hand, and minority identity and cultural difference on the other hand, as a conflict shaped by the politics of governmentality. This paper works against suggestions that Turkey’s democratization process is incomplete. It also does not suggest that the Roma would begin to resist the narratives of nationalist belonging once they become conscious of their oppression by the state. Rather, the Roma in Turkey are involved in a politics of heterogeneity, which is “always contextual, strategic, historically specific, and provisional” (Chatterjee 2004; 22). Indeed, this is what democracy looks like; not only in postcolonial states and the so-called ‘developing nations’ or ‘third world’, but also in the very places where democracy is modeled on European notions of liberty, equality, and fraternity and where its progress is monitored by the European Union.