As Turkey’s first Islam-based, non-Kemalist ruling political party, the AKP and its political stance has been widely discussed since its founding in 2002. After reviewing this debate, this paper examines the notion of “Islamic Conservatism” in contrast to Islamism, as the basis of the AKP’s foundational ideology. Even though Islamism is commonly used to refer to all sorts of Islam-based political movements and ideologies, a closer look at its more informed usage reveals that it refers to an intellectual and political movement which started in the late-nineteenth century to empower Muslim populations against colonialism and imperialism by undertaking radical change based on modern interpretations of the Qur’an. While there were elements of Islamism in the ideological makeup of the AKP’s predecessor, Refah Party, the AKP itself was never really Islamist in this sense. This paper argues that the AKP’s ideology can more accurately be defined as the Turkish version of conservatism, which upholds a sense of community based on civilization as opposed to the ‘ummah’ preferred by Islamists, has close ties with the Nakshibendi Sufi orders in contrast to the anti-Sufi stance of the Islamists, and locates its intellectual roots in traditionalist Islamic philosophy, contrary to the modernist, reformist or even progressive leanings in contemporary Islamist thought. Drawing on these elements, this paper seeks to demonstrate that civilizationism functions as an Islamic-conservative alternative to Kemalist-Turkish nationalism by providing a sense of community that defines Turkey as the cradle of Ottoman-Islamic civilization and offers an alternative sense of national history that includes the 1000-year Seljuk and Ottoman past, which was ousted by Kemalism. Other elements of civilizationism include Islamic modernism, defined as the restoration and advancement of Ottoman civilization, and Islamic capitalism, defined as a form of Islamic neoliberal developmentalism, both of which were thoroughly debated and developed throughout the 1990s among Islamic intellectual circles and came to constitute the foundations of the AKP’s conservative ideology. This paper focuses on the notion of civilization as it was developed in select Islamic-conservative publications and research centers, with a particular focus on BISAV (Foundation for Science and Arts) and its main publication, Divan: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, which were founded by Ahmet Davuto?lu, who was Turkey’s 26th Prime Minister, and one of the architects of the AKP’s Ottomanist-civilizationist policies.

Through a study of the field of Islamic economic theorizing in Turkey, this paper suggests that this intellectual tradition complicates the conventional dichotomy of conservatism vs. progressivism. This diverse intellectual field draws from both conservative and progressive intellectual traditions, but often such complexity is overlooked in favor of monolithic assumptions about the nature of Islam-inspired political movements. By studying some of the concepts that Muslim intellectuals deploy in order to articulate the proper relationship between religion and markets, I argue that this field can be better understood by paying attention to the distinction between justice (adalet) and virtue (ahlak). To build this argument, I examine the writings of three contemporary Turkish Muslim intellectuals: Ihsan Eliaçik, Lütfi Bergen, and Mustafa Özel. Despite a shared theoretical interest in the proper relationship between Islam and capitalism, each one of these intellectuals articulate different views about development, equality, faith, and philanthropy. For instance, Ihsan Eliaçik sees Islam as a decidedly anti-capitalist religion, Lütfi Bergen defines Islam as a pre-capitalist belief system, whereas Mustafa Özel identifies a series of pro-capitalist traits in the Muslim faith. In explaining the proper relationship between faith and markets, each one of these intellectuals position themselves in the Islamic intellectual field: whereas articulations of ahlak represent an understanding of faith as a personal mechanism for taming the potentially destructive impact of modern capitalism, notions of adalet are often deployed in order to call for governmental solutions to problems such as inequality, poverty, and unemployment. One of the key issues at the heart of these debates concerns the state-market relationship particularly pertaining what an Islamic perspective on the economy entails for contemporary questions of governance. In addition to exploring the range of discussions concerning the moral economy within the Islamic intellectual field, I also situate these debates within Turkey’s political trajectory, particularly concerning the neoliberal rule of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi, AKP). This paper identifies what is at stake in these various formulations and illustrates how each articulation of market Islam comes with its own set of expectations and exclusions.

Among the conservative-nationalist intellectuals of the early Cold War (1940s to 1970s) Turkey, Necip Fazil Kisakurek (1904-1983) stands as a distinguished figure with his profound impact on the development of Islamic political thought in Turkey. Kisakurek, despite being described as conservative, Islamist or rightist in different accounts, often defined his worldview as "mukaddesatci". As one of the first exemplars of Islam-based opposition to Kemalist modernization project, mukaddesatci ideology of Kisakurek was after a restoration of values and institutions that were deemed to be holy/sacred (mukaddes) in a rapidly Westernizing society. Kisakurek's mukaddesatci thought, reconciling elements of religious conservatism, Islamist revivalism, Turkish nationalism and Ottomanism, immensely influenced later generations of nationalist-conservatives and Islamists including the cadres of currently ruling Justice and Development Party. I contend that "mukaddesatci" better captures the ideological outlook. Kisakurek has in fact been a highly disputed figure in Turkish intellectual scene for various reason. I contend in this paper that Kisakurek’s significance in terms of intellectual history was beyond his unreliable political position, unsubstantial philosophical arguments and inconsistent lifestyle. Still he was able to stir up his audience through his writings thanks to his ability to appeal to their sentiments with his sharp pen. Notably, Kisakurek gave voice to the existing sentiments of the people with Islamic sensibilities which I associate in this paper with what Friedrich Nietzsche and his followers called as ressentiment. Kisakurek’s audience found in his writings the reflection of their senses of injustice, humiliation and alienation vis-à-vis Westernization. When K?sakürek put these sentiments into words, not only did he bring them to surface but he also steered them in accordance with his own mukaddesatci worldview. Based on an analysis of Kisakurek’s writings, I present “mukaddesatcilik” as an ideology of ressentiment and further discuss the political content of this ideology. After biographical information and a general overview of Kisakurek’s ideological project, both with contextual details of early- to mid-20th century Turkey, I draw the outline of mukaddesatcilik with the help of the literature on ressentiment in socio-political analysis. Then I elaborate on the vision of politics, state and political community in K?sakurek’s mukaddesatç? ideology. I conclude the paper with an emphasis on Kisakurek’s enduring legacy affecting contemporary Turkish politics.

When The Grand National Assembly was debating on the foundation of the first theology department in Turkey, a representative warns the minister of education about the decision and states “the struggle between mektep (school) and madrasa (Muslim religious school) and the conflict between science and religion have caused bloody stages of history not only in the history of our country but also in the history of humankind…”(T.B.M.M., 1949, 20-3, pp. 279-280). As the quote sets forth, religious education is a long-standing issue in Turkey, starting from the mektep-madrasa conflict in the late Ottoman Empire to the foundation of theology faculties in the early years of the Turkish Republic. This issue is closely related to the predicament of modernity and Islam in Turkey, which involves the role and place of Islam in political and social life that continues to be at the center of heated debates. This paper discusses this controversial character of religious education in Turkey and aims to reach a deeper understanding of its significance within Turkish politics. The academic study of Islam in Turkey can be divided into two conflicting schools of thought: the social scientific study of Islam based on the use of reason and social-scientific methodologies, and the theological approach built on traditional knowledge and faith. Düzgün, as a Professor of Kalam at Ankara Divinity School, goes beyond this dilemma by employing his unique approach that can be termed as critical modernism, through which he reevaluates some of the core binary concepts of Islamic studies, such as reason/faith, modern/traditional and knowledge/belief and develops a critique of the structure/contexts in which they are used. This paper analyzes Düzgün’s critiques to understand the controversy over the role of Islam in Turkish modernization and the contemporary sociopolitical dynamics of Turkey. It argues that the Islamic intellectual work is directly related to the political debates in Turkey, and the critical modernist approach that Düzgün undertakes is vital in understanding these debates; assessing the significance of his work will open up new paths for the future of Islamic political thought. This paper brings a new perspective to the study of religious education in Turkey by focusing on the place of Islamic studies in universities, which has not yet received the attention it deserves. It contributes to the literature by reflecting on the relationship between the rising Islamic intellectual area and wider sociopolitical and global relations in the world.