Under the Banner of Islam: Turks, Kurds, and the Limits of Religious Unity (RELIGION AND GLOBAL POLITICS SERIES) [1 ed.] 0197511813, 9780197511817

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Under the Banner of Islam

Under the Banner of Islam Turks, Kurds, and the Limits of Religious Unity G Ü L AY T Ü R K M E N

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3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2021 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Türkmen, Gülay, author. Title: Under the banner of Islam : Turks, Kurds, and the limits of religious unity / Gülay Türkmen. Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020039695 (print) | LCCN 2020039696 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197511817 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197511831 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Kurds—Turkey—Politics and government—21st century. | Islam and politics—Turkey—21st century. | Turkey—Politics and government—21st century. | Turkey—Ethnic relations—21st century. Classification: LCC DR4 3 5.K8 7 T8725 2021 (print) | LCC DR4 3 5.K8 7 (ebook) | DDC 956.104/1—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039695 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020039696 DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197511817.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

To my parents, Femriye and Ali

Contents Acknowledgments  Prologue 

Introduction: Ethnicity and “Muslim fraternity” 

“Under the Banner of Islam”?  “The Ambivalence of the Sacred”: Religion and Conflict Resolution  The Porous Borders of Religion and Ethnicity  The Shifting Borders of Religious and Political Fields  Organizational Structure 

ix xiii

1

5 11 14 20 21

1. “Green Kemalism”: The Evolving Role of Islam in the Kurdish Conflict 

24

2. “Islam as Cement”: The Way Out? 

54

3. Muslim Kurds: The Case for Religio-​Ethnic Identity 

77

Kurdish Revolts in the Late Ottoman Period: Against Centralization?  Kurds in the Early Republican Period: Kurdish-​Islamic Synthesis?  The Secularization of the Kurdish Movement: 1950–​1978  Bringing Islam Back In: 1990–​2002  “There Is Only One Nation and That Is the Nation of Abraham”  The Ummah That Never Was  AKP’s Kurdish Policy: Neo-​Ottoman Pan-​Islamism  “God Could Have Created Us All the Same”: Religious Roots of Ethnicity  Kurdish Islam Embodied: Civil Friday Prayers  Turkey’s Religious Field in the 2000s: A Bourdieusian Analysis  Islam as a Tool of Resistance 

4. “Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”: The Case for Ethno-​Religious Identity 

Ottomanism, Islamism, Turkism: The Birth Pangs of Turkish Nationalism  Turkish History Thesis and the Turkification of Islam  Turkey’s Pending Dilemma: The Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis  AKP’s Transformation: “From ‘the Kurd’s Qur’an’ to ‘the Turk’s Flag’ ” 

29 37 44 51 56 61 70

80 85 91 97

101 110 119 125 130

viii Contents

Conclusion: United in Religion, Divided by Ethnicity? 

135

Appendix: Methodology  References  Index 

145 151 175

The Way Forward: Whither Kurdish Conflict? 

141

Acknowledgments This book would not have been possible if it were not for the help and generosity of so many people I am privileged to have in my life. At the University of Virginia, where the seeds of this book were sown, I extend my thanks to Jeffrey Olick, Krishan Kumar, and Allison Pugh, for their support and encouragement. Yale University was where I started the research for the book and completed considerable portions of it. At Yale, my deepest thanks and gratitude go to Philip Gorski. It is to his mentorship and his oeuvre that I owe the fruition of the ideas that make up this book. I cannot thank Julia Adams enough. She has always been there whenever I needed crucial advice and feedback. I am deeply thankful to Jonathan Wyrtzen for his intellectual input and academic guidance. I  benefitted immensely from conversations with Sigrun Kahl, Ron Eyerman, Jeffrey Alexander, Emily Erikson, and Frank Griffel. Thanks go to everyone that I had the chance to read, think, and discuss together at the Yale Center for Comparative Research, the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology, the Yale MacMillan Center Initiative on Religion and Politics, and the Yale MacMillan Center Council on Middle East Studies. Conversations with Elisabeth Becker, Shai Dromi, Samuel Stabler, Luke Wagner, Jeffrey Guhin, Ateş Altınordu, Xiaohong Xu, Sadia Saeed, Dolunay Uğur, Sam Nelson, Alison Gerber, Joe Klett, Kristin Plys, Jin Su Joo, and Roger Baumann helped improve this book in many ways. Special thanks go to Mustafa Yavaş for providing me with the academic resources I would have otherwise not been able to obtain. I got lucky when Mehmet Kurt came to Yale; he has not only been a valuable friend and colleague since then but he also introduced me to “the gatekeepers” in Diyarbakır. I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to everyone in Diyarbakır and Batman who facilitated my research. All of my interviewees deserve heart-​ felt thanks for putting their trust in me. I can only hope that I have done justice to their stories and ideas. I am grateful to Ahmet Şık for putting me in touch with his contacts in Diyarbakır and Batman. Reha Ruhavioğlu also deserves thanks for introducing me to several key interviewees in Diyarbakır. I completed the book during my time at the University of Goettingen. I am indebted to Matthias Koenig for his ongoing support and encouragement.

x Acknowledgments The Institute of Sociology and Forum for Interdisciplinary Religious Studies provided me with the necessary institutional and intellectual environment to complete the book. Defne Över, Madeleine Elfenbein, Yektan Türkyılmaz, Kirsten Wesselhoeft, Sinem Adar, and Jennifer Silva all offered critical feedback on different parts of the book at different stages. Carmen Cvetkovic, Eunike Piwoni, Marie-​Pier Joly, and Lisa Harms have kept me grounded with their friendship and advice. At Oxford University Press, it is thanks to Cynthia Read’s belief in the project and her meticulous editorial guidance that the book has come to life. Thoughtful feedback by the two anonymous readers has significantly improved the manuscript. I thank Drew Anderla, Prabhu Chinnasamy, and the editorial team for carefully overseeing the production and marketing process. I am obliged to İhsan Oturmak for generously providing the beautiful cover image. Funds by the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Yale Macmillan Center made possible the research for the book, while fellowships by the University of Goettingen ensured its completion. Parts of the Introduction (and some quotes from Chapters 2, 3, and 4) were published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, and in Qualitative Sociology. I  presented parts of the book at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, the Middle Eastern Studies Association, the Social Science History Association, and the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism, as well as at the UCSIA Summer School at the University of Antwerp, and at the workshop “Imagining and Regulating Ethnic and Religious Diversity in Turkey” at the Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Goettingen. I  am grateful to all the participants who provided comments at these meetings. Gülbeyaz and Şensöz Dervişoğlu have offered continuous familial help and affection. It is to Gülbeyaz Anne that I owe the last sprint that made the completion of this book possible. My brother Eray Türkmen ran to my help countless times when I needed uninterrupted writing time. I would also like to thank him for his life-​long support and love, and for his sharp sense of humor, which has never failed to keep my spirits up. I am grateful to have the caring sisterhood of Işıl Eğrikavuk, Funda Küçükyılmaz, Ceylan Harman, Pınar Kemerli, and Elif Erol to fall onto whenever I falter. I would have never been able to write this book without my spouse Rıza Dervişoğlu’s comforting presence by my side. His optimism and his unconditional love were what kept me going throughout the writing process. He is

Acknowledgments  xi my anchor in this nomadic life of ours, and I am so extremely lucky to have him in my life. Our son Atlas has not made writing easier with his constant demand for attention. However, it is in his shiny, bright eyes and his invigorating laughter that I have sought refuge whenever I needed to remind myself to “hang in there.” I am looking forward to discovering the tiny little wonders of life with him for years to come. I owe the biggest thanks to my parents, Femriye and Ali Türkmen, for their unwavering support over the years. They have never ceased to put their trust in me and I am truly grateful for that. I feel so fortunate to have their wisdom, wit, kindness, and generosity illuminate my way. I dedicate this book to them.

Prologue “Write my words down! Do not keep them to yourself,” he said, with a stern voice. “Write these words down, and tell them, not all of us are ‘terrorists.’ Those TV channels they are watching, they are lying; those newspapers they are reading, they are lying. The truth is so simple, so easy to see for those who want to see it. Look at you! You came all the way from the United States to listen to us, to give us a voice; they are so close but they don’t want to listen to us, they don’t want to see us, they turn their heads away. That is why you should write these down. Let them know, make them read; all we want is equality, all we want is to be able to speak in our own language freely. I will talk with you only if you promise me that you’ll write these down.” Sitting across me on the floor is a Kurdish imam—​seyda1 or mele,2 as the locals call them—​in his late seventies. His religious attire is complete with a white beard and a green takke. “All right, I promise, I’ll write them down,” I say, with a quiet voice. He looks straight in my eyes. I can tell by his looks that he is still very tense; he doesn’t trust me yet, at least not fully. Before going on any further, he reiterates: “Write these down. Do not let these words fly away. Write them down.” At that very moment, with those very words, he seals the fate of this book. From that moment on, I knew that, whatever happens, sooner or later, I had to write and finish this manuscript. If not for myself, I had to do it for the sake of that old seyda and for the fulfillment of the promise I made to him. In one way or another, I had to convey his words to whom they really belong, namely, you, the reader. His words have kept me company since; they have saved me from falling into total despair when I have lost all faith in my ability to complete this task. Hereby, I trust you with his words and those of numerous others who have been generous enough to spare some time to talk 1 Seyda is a title given to those who have obtained the highest level in the madrasa education system. They not only conduct prayers but also give lectures in a madrasa (Islamic education schools, which have been banned in Turkey since 1924). 2 The word mele is used as a local title for those clerics who lead a prayer.

xiv Prologue with me—​a complete stranger—​to discuss with me what is for them a quite sensitive topic, to share with me their ideas and emotions, and more than anything, to put their trust in me. I am just a messenger, though; my mission ends here. It is now up to you to decide what to do with these words. I hope they will serve you well.

Under the Banner of Islam

Introduction Ethnicity and “Muslim fraternity” And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided. And remember the favor of Allah upon you—​when you were enemies and He brought your hearts together and you became, by His favor, brothers. —​Qur’an  3:103

On a hot, dry morning in June 2012, during the very early days of my research in Diyarbakır, a Kurdish-​majority city in southeastern Anatolia, Hamdi Abi1—​a municipal police officer who was later to become my right hand man—​calls me and asks in a hurry: “You still want to go to the Civil Friday Prayer?” “Yes, of course,” I say, “that’s what I’m here for.” “OK, then I’ll come pick you up from the hotel. We need to rush; the prayer is going to start in 10 minutes.” Luckily, my hotel room faces the Dağkapı Square where the prayer will take place. While waiting for Hamdi Abi I watch the Square from my window and see groups of men arriving. As the time for prayer approaches, the crowd gets bigger. There is no mosque in sight, though. That’s the whole point of this prayer. In contrast to regular Friday prayers, which are held in mosques all over Turkey, Civil Friday Prayers (Sivil Cuma Namazları) take place in the street. Refusing to be led by state-​appointed imams who give the Friday sermons (khutba) in Turkish, these men prefer to pray behind local Kurdish imams (meles) who give their sermons in Kurdish. Hamdi Abi arrives shortly. Together we walk to the Square. To my astonishment, there are only a few men left there! “Where did the others go?” I ask. Hamdi Abi laughs: “It’s unbearably hot today (about 40ºC/​100ºF); no one would be able to pray under direct sunlight, so they’ve decided to pray downstairs.” Downstairs? A spacious area right below the Square, home to several stores that 1 All given names have been changed to protect the identity of the respondents. Abi is a form of address, meaning “elder brother” in Turkish; it’s used as a sign of respect.

Under the Banner of Islam. Gülay Türkmen, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197511817.003.0001.

2 Introduction are all closed for prayer. I slowly start to descend the stairs, but hesitate to go down any further as the prayer is already in progress and I don’t want to disturb the jamaat (the community). Moreover, as is customary with Friday prayers, it’s a men-​only jamaat. There are only a few women and they are praying separately at the top of the stairs. To top it all off, my attire is not suitable for prayer: short sleeves, no headscarf. . . . Seeing my hesitation, Hamdi Abi says: “What are you waiting for? Why don’t you go down? Go, go! Take some pictures while the prayer lasts.” I had told him that I would like to take pictures. “I don’t want to disturb them,” I say. “Well, don’t you see those three cameramen who go around recording the whole thing? If the jamaat is not distracted by those men I’m sure they won’t be distracted by your presence either. Now go; I’ll be waiting here!” Still hesitant, I obey reluctantly and go downstairs. There are about 500 men, sitting in rows, in prayer style. Staying on the side, I take a couple of pictures, paying attention to not distract too much those who are praying. I enter a side room where the mele is giving the Friday sermon, in Kurdish. I get a couple of curious looks. Meanwhile, the men with cameras don’t show any sign of worry, they go around quite comfortably. One of them stays put and records the mele while the other two walk in between rows and hold the camera straight onto people’s faces. After recording a few minutes of the sermon, I leave the room and go upstairs to ask Hamdi Abi about the cameramen: “Who are they? Why are they recording the prayer?” “They are plain-​clothes police officers,” he says. “They record the whole session. They then take the recordings to the police station, transcribe and translate the sermon from Kurdish to Turkish and check the text to make sure that nothing ‘harmful’ is said.” “Harmful? Harmful to whom? How harmful can a sermon be?” I think to myself. Apparently it can be very harmful, according to the Turkish state. From my later observations in the region and interviews with imams and other religious and political actors I  would learn that the state considers these prayers to be of great threat to its authority. And for good reason: initiated as acts of “civil disobedience” (Thoreau 1942 [1849]) in 2011 by pro-​Kurdish movement imams and terminated in July 2013, these prayers emerged in the midst of a period when the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi/​AKP) highlighted Sunni Islam as an overarching supranational identity that would annul ethnic divisions between the predominantly Sunni Muslim Turks and Kurds.2 To that end, the AKP promoted “Muslim 2 Note that about 15% of the Kurdish population in Turkey is deemed to be Alevis—​a heterodox branch of Shi‘a Islam. Kurdish Alevis are thought to comprise 15% of the overall Alevi population in

Introduction  3 fraternity” as a remedy to the 34-​year-​long armed conflict between the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê/​PKK) and the Turkish Armed Forces (Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri/​TSK). As such, Civil Friday Prayers challenged the government’s authority both politically and religiously: politically, because the Friday sermon was given in Kurdish, which is not allowed;3 religiously, because they were held out in the streets (rather than in state-​run mosques) and the meles prepared their own sermons rather than reading the text prepared by the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı/​Diyanet from hereon). During the two years they were held, they became quite widespread in most Kurdish-​majority cities in eastern and southeastern Anatolia. At their peak, they attracted around 5,000 people in Diyarbakır. Aiming to highlight the ban on Kurdish sermons in particular and the limitations on the Kurdish language in general, they drew attention to the assimilation of Kurds in Turkey. Most importantly, along with other factors, they played an important role in forcing the state to give de facto permission to sermons in Kurdish, if not de jure. Intrigued by these prayers, in this book I  focus on the ambivalent role Sunni Islam has played in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict—​both as a conflict-​ resolution tool and as a tool of resistance. Although the Kurdish conflict has historically been characterized by a secular nationalist ideology both on the side of the PKK and on the side of the Turkish state, since the 1980s different governments have at times resorted to religion to subdue Kurdish nationalism. However, none had advocated “Muslim fraternity” as strongly as the AKP governments have. Moreover, never before did the secular PKK, with

Turkey (see Erdal Gezik’s Alevi Kürtler (2014), for a detailed account of Kurdish Alevis). According to Markus Dressler, “Alevism is part of the Islamic tradition, although located on its margins—​margins that are marked with indigenous terms such as Sufi and Shi‘a, or with outside qualifiers such as heterodoxy or syncretism. It is further widely taken for granted that Alevism constitutes an intrinsic part of Anatolian and Turkish culture. [ . . . ] The question of where to locate the ethnic and religious origins of Alevism continues to be highly contested” (2013: xii). For another informative study on the Alevis, see Ayfer Karakaya-​Stump’s Vefailik, Bektaşilik, Kızılbaşlık: Alevi Kaynaklarını, Tarihini, ve Tarihyazımını Yeniden Düşünmek (2015). Because my research question requires me to hold sectarian identity constant, I have left Kurdish Alevis out of the scope of this book and have interviewed only Sunni Kurds. 3 There is no official ban on Kurdish language in Turkey, but Kurdish has been de facto criminalized since the very early days of the Republic. (The speaking of Kurdish in public was outlawed between 1983 and 1991). The current constitution, penned in 1980, recognizes only Turkish as the country’s official language, and article 42 of the constitution states that no language other than Turkish can be taught as a mother tongue to Turkish citizens in educational institutions. Moreover, since the coup attempt in 2016, scores of Kurdish-​language TVs, newspapers, and Kurdish-​language courses have been closed down by emergency decrees.

4 Introduction Marxist origins, display as positive a stance toward Islam as it has during the AKP rule. Especially during the peace talks that took place between 2012 and 2015, the role of religion has become so pronounced in the conflict that both Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the PKK, went on to cite the same Qur’anic verses to emphasize “Muslim unity and solidarity.” Yet, in June 2015 the ceasefire was broken, and in January 2016 Erdoğan declared that the “peace process is over for good.” Since then, clashes between the Turkish Armed Forces and the PKK have resumed; more than 3,500 people died, and thousands have been internally displaced. Against this background, I inquire why “Muslim fraternity” has not resonated well among Sunni Turks and Kurds. Using the Kurdish case as an opportunity to explore the intricate relationship between religion, ethnicity, and nationalism, I  scrutinize the role of religion in ethnic conflicts, and ask: How do religious, ethnic, and national identities diverge and converge in religiously homogeneous ethnic conflicts? Is it possible for religion to act as a conflict resolution tool? Why? Why not? More specifically, why is it that, despite the global increase in the importance of religion (Casanova 1994) and despite the changing stances of the Turkish state and the Kurdish movement, the two parties have failed to unite “under the banner of Islam”? In search for answers to these questions, I take the reader on a journey into the inner circles of religious elites from different backgrounds:  non-​state-​ appointed local Kurdish meles, state-​appointed Kurdish and Turkish imams, heads of religious nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), members of religious orders (tariqahs), and pious politicians. Relying mainly on participant observation in Friday prayers, systematic analysis of newspapers, and 62 interviews conducted over the course of a year (between June 2012 and June 2013) in three different cities (İstanbul and the majority-​Kurdish Diyarbakır and Batman)4 I develop the concept of “religio-​ethnic” identity and put forward a fourfold typology capturing the convergence and divergence of religious and ethnic identities, as conceptualized by Kurdish and Turkish religious and political elites: (1) ethno-​religious; (2) religio-​ethnic; (3) religious; (4) secular. Because these categories cannot be considered in isolation from the evolution of certain ideas and institutions since the late Ottoman period, the structural changes the political and religious fields have undergone in Turkey since 2002, and the repercussions these changes have had on various 4 Please refer to Appendix for detailed information about the interviews and the methodology.

Introduction  5 actors, I  claim that different identity categories, along with institutional and political changes, and the ensuing transformation of power and network relations, prevent Islam from acting as a unifying conflict-​resolution tool in the Kurdish conflict. Blending interview data with historical institutional analysis and secondary sources, I demonstrate the symbiotic relationship between the changes in Turkey’s religious and political fields and the religious and political elites’ conceptualizations of religious and ethnic identities. To that end, I  employ a theoretical framework that attends to not only micro-​level identity-​formation processes or macro-​level doctrinal debates, but also a meso-​level analysis of religious and political actors and how in their hands theological contents might change shape. Drawing on theories of symbolic boundary making (Lamont and Fournier 1992; Lichterman 2008; Lamont and Molnar 2002; Bail 2008; Wimmer 2008, 2009, 2013) and Bourdieusian field theory (Bourdieu 1991, 1993, 1996; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), and expanding on the literatures on ethnicity, religion, and conflict, I promote a theoretical intervention regarding the role of religion in conflict resolution, as well as the formation and conceptualization of religious and ethnic identities in conflict zones. The resulting narrative is not only a story of religion, ethnicity, and nationalism in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict, but also a story of how ethnic and religious identities are negotiated in conflict resolution and how symbolic boundaries are drawn in ethnic conflict zones.

“Under the Banner of Islam”? On June 1, 2011, at an election rally in Diyarbakır, a Kurdish-​majority city in southeastern Anatolia, then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressed a crowd composed mainly of Kurdish citizens and said: “We are brothers since time immemorial, and we will be so forever. We both descend from Adam and Eve, right? End of discussion! That’s why we are one. Oh my brothers, the jamaat in Diyarbakır’s Great Mosque (Ulu Camii) pray towards the same direction (qiblah5) as those in İstanbul’s Süleymaniye Mosque, in

5 Qiblah is the direction Muslims pray toward during salah (namaz), one of the five pillars of Islam and an obligatory religious duty for every Muslim. It is fixed as the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca.

6 Introduction Edirne’s Selimiye Mosque and in Ankara’s Hacıbayram Mosque. See? Our qiblah is one and the same. Is there any difference here? No, none!”6 Coming from Erdoğan, the leader of the pro-​Islamist AKP, this emphasis on “Muslim fraternity” was not surprising. After all, several politicians in Turkey, including the leader of the 1980 military coup, Kenan Evren, and the leader of the islamist Welfare Party (Refah Partisi/​RP), Necmettin Erbakan, had underlined Sunni Islam as the tie that binds Kurds and Turks. In line with this thinking, Erdoğan’s AKP embraced a supranational religious approach in dealing with the Kurdish conflict. The AKP cadres envisioned Sunni Islam as an overarching identity that could bridge ethno-​nationalist divisions between the predominantly Sunni Muslim Kurds and Turks and hoped that an increasing emphasis on “Muslim fraternity” would help solve the conflict. To that end, in December 2011, the Diyanet declared its intention to hire 1,000 Kurdish meles as state-​employed imams, after giving them a six-​month intensive course.7 A  few months later, at a National Security Council (Milli Güvenlik Kurulu/​MGK) meeting in February 2012, the government decided to assign a more active role to the Diyanet in “the fight against terrorism” (Çiçek 2013: 159). Some commentators were optimistic about the success of this strategy (White 2013; Mitchell 2012). However, numerous others were deeply suspicious (Çakır 2011;8 Gürses 2015; Houston 2001; Sarıgil and Fazlıoğlu 2013; Yavuz and Özcan 2006). After all, despite the well-​documented importance of religion among Kurds in Turkey (Atacan 2001; Sakallıoğlu 1998; Çevik 2012; Houston 2001; Jacoby and Tabak 2015; Özoğlu 2007; Sarıgil and Fazlıoğlu 2013; Bruinessen 1984, 1991, 1992, 2000) the leading cadres of the Kurdish movement9 have historically been characterized by secular nationalism. 6 Erdoğan’s election campaign speech in Diyarbakır, June 1, 2011, http://​www.akparti.org.tr/​site/​ haberler/​1-​haziran-​diyarbakır-​mitingi-​konusmasinin-​tam-​metni/​8230 (retrieved July 20, 2015). 7 Because the peace talks between the government and the Kurdish movement took place in secret, it is not possible to know how active a role these meles were given in the peace process. 8 Ruşen Çakır, “İslam Kardeşliği Kürt Sorununun Çözüm Anahtarı Olabilir mi?” [Can Islamic Fraternity Be the Key to the Solution of the Kurdish Problem?], Vatan, June 2, 2011, http://​www. gazetevatan.com/​rusen-​çakır-​381112-​yazar-​yazisi-​-​islam-​kardeşligi-​-​kürt-​sorununu-​cozumun-​ anahtari-​olabilir-​mi-​/​ (retrieved August 20,  2015). 9 “Kurdish movement” includes the complex set of legal and illegal Kurdish organizations associated with the Kurdish struggle for greater political and cultural rights and political autonomy. It comprises the illegal PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê/​Kürdistan İşçi Partisi/​Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and TAK (Teyrêbazên Azadiya Kurdistan/​Kürdistan Özgürlük Şahinleri/​Kurdistan Freedom Hawks), a PKK offshoot, and the legal HDP (Halkların Demokratik Partisi/​People’s Democratic Party), DBP (Demokratik Bölgeler Partisi/​Democratic Regions Party), DTK (Demokratik Toplum Kongresi/​ Democratic Society Congress), and HDK (Halkların Demokratik Kongresi/​People’s Democratic Congress). Note that the PKK is listed as a terrorist organization by the government of Turkey, the United States, the European Union, and NATO.

Introduction  7 The PKK was established in 1978 as a secular, Marxist, armed insurgent organization by a small group known, at the time, as Apocular, led by the now-​imprisoned Abdullah Öcalan. They undertook their first armed attack against the Turkish Armed Forces in 1984. Blending Kurdish nationalism with orthodox Marxism, they aimed to organize a revolutionary Kurdish uprising and establish an independent Kurdish state that would encompass Kurdish-​majority lands located in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran (Marcus 2007; McDowall 2004; Romano 2006). As such, religion had no role to play in their revolutionary agenda. It was only in the late 1980s, when the PKK started becoming popular among the masses, that religion made its way into the PKK discourse. The PKK adopted a much more conciliatory tone toward Islam in the 1990s when the Kurdish-​Islamist Hizbullah (see Kurt 2017 for a detailed ethnographic account of the Kurdish Hizbullah) emerged as a rival organization (Gürbüz 2016) in southeastern Anatolia. In 1995, to counter Hizbullah’s growing impact on religious Kurds, Öcalan “declared the PKK to be the real fighter for Islam understood as a religion of justice against all kinds of oppression” (Özsoy 2010: 148). Under the AKP rule, with religion regaining importance in the political sphere, Islam started occupying a much more prominent place in the discourse of the Kurdish movement (Gürses 2015; Sarıgil 2018). For example, in March 2013, during the Newroz ceremony in Diyarbakır, in a letter he sent from prison, Öcalan underlined the importance of Muslim identity and reminded the Turkish people, “their thousand-​year co-​existence with Kurds under the banner of Islam rests on the principles of fraternity and solidarity” (Akşam 2013).10 Successive to Öcalan’s letter, in April 2014, the predecessor of People’s Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi/​HDP), the now defunct Peace and Democracy Party (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi/​BDP) organized a mass ceremony (mawlid) in Diyarbakır to celebrate the birth of the Prophet Muhammad. A month after this, in May 2014, the Democratic Society Congress (DTK)—​a platform that brings together NGOs close to the Kurdish movement—​organized the first Democratic Islam Congress in Diyarbakır. It was called for by Öcalan (Dağ 2014),11 who, in a meeting with the BDP lawmakers in October 2013, had suggested that a congress 10 For the full-​text in Turkish, see “İşte Öcalan’ın Mektubu,” Akşam, March 22, 2013, http://​www. aksam.com.tr/​siyaset/​iste-​öcalanin-​mektubu/​haber-​179573. (retrieved August 20, 2015). 11 Rahman Dağ, “Democratic Islam Congress and the Middle East,” Open Democracy, June 13, 2014, https://​www.opendemocracy.net/​arab-​awakening/​rahman-​dağ/​democratic-​islam-​congress-​ and-​middle-​east (retrieved January 11, 2016).

8 Introduction modeled after the Prophet Muhammad’s council (shura) should be convened in Diyarbakır against groups “betraying Islam,” in particular al-​Qadea and al-​Nusra.12 In a three-​page letter he sent to the congress, Öcalan stated that he “find[s]‌very meaningful the ‘national unity’ of modern Islamic ummah.”13 This first congress was followed by another one held in Hagen, Germany, by the Federation of Kurdistan Islamic Community on May 24–​ 25, 2014. Whether out of pragmatism or out of sincere acceptance, it seemed that Öcalan now considered religion as too important a social force to be ignored. Meanwhile, after two failed peace initiatives in 2005 and 2009, the state and the PKK had started a third round of peace negotiations in 2013. On February 12, 2013, Erdoğan said that he would “go as far as drinking hemlock poison” if it meant “putting an end to terror” and achieving peace.14 In May 2013, the PKK announced its withdrawal outside Turkish borders (though it has never fully withdrawn). In August 2014, Öcalan claimed that “the 30-​year long war is about to come to an end by means of democratic negotiations,”15 and by March 2015 he announced a 10-​article draft about disarmament. As such, it seemed as if the “Muslim fraternity” plan was working successfully, to the extent that Öcalan and Erdoğan had quoted the same hadith16—​ “no Arab has superiority over an Ajami,17 and no Ajami has superiority over an Arab”—​to foreground Islam’s capacity to carry different ethnicities side by side. This was what led some scholars to conclude that Islam could act as a successful peacemaker and “that Turkish Islamists have more ideological potential to successfully manage ethnic diversity than their secular counterparts” (Somer and Glüpker-​Kesebir 2016: 530). 12 “Öcalan calls for Democratic Islam Congress,” Hürriyet Daily News, October 15, 2013. http://​ www.hurriyetdailynews.com/​öcalan-​calls-​for-​democratic-​islam-​congress.aspx?pageID=238&nID= 56274&NewsCatID=338 (retrieved January 11, 2016). 13 For the full text, see “Öcalan’dan İslam Kongresi’ne mesaj,” Bianet, May 10, 2014, http://​bianet. org/​bianet/​siyaset/​155582-​öcalan-​dan-​islam-​kongresi-​ne-​mesaj (retrieved January 11,  2016). 14 “Terörü bitirmek icin Başbakan zehir bile içer,” Milliyet, February 12, 2013, http://​www.milliyet. com.tr/​teroru-​bitirmek-​icin-​basbakan-​zehir-​bile-​icer/​siyaset/​siyasetdetay/​12.02.2013/​1667676/​default.htm (retrieved January 11, 2016). 15 For the full statement, see “Öcalan:  30 yıllık savaş sonuçlanma aşamasında,” in BBC Turkce, August 16, 2014, http://​www.bbc.com/​turkce/​haberler/​2014/​08/​140816_​öcalan (retrieved January 12, 2016). 16 Aram Ekin Duran, “Öcalan ile Erdoğan’ı buluşturan Hadis-​i Şerif,” T24, February 27, 2013, http://​t24.com.tr/​haber/​öcalan-​ile-​erdoğani-​bulusturan-​hadis-​i-​serif,224691 (retrieved January 11, 2016). 17 In Arabic, Ajami is used to denote primarily “non-​Arabs,” but it is also used when referring to the Persians.

Introduction  9 It was during these developments, between 2012 and 2013, that I conducted my research in the region, and realized that under the seemingly successful “Muslim fraternity” project lay a shaky ground consisting of a complex web of religious and ethnic identities. In the meantime, the war in Syria, especially the establishment of a de facto autonomous Kurdish federation in northern Syria (known as Rojava), had its repercussions on the peace process in Turkey. On October 6–​8, 2014, Kurds in Turkey took to the streets to protest the Turkish government, which they accused of implicitly supporting the Islamic State (ISIS) in the siege of the Syrian-​Kurdish city of Kobanî.18 More than 50 people died in the two-​day-​long clashes that took place not only between the Turkish security forces and the Kurdish movement supporters, but also between the pro-​PKK and pro-​ISIS/​pro-​Hizbullah Kurds (Coşkun 2015). As a result, the growing mistrust between the Turkish government and the Kurdish movement turned into a crisis (Güneş and Lowe 2015; Resch 2017). In March 2015, a few days after the HDP leader Selahattin Demirtaş had stated that they “will not let Erdoğan become president” (Cumhuriyet 2015), Erdoğan declared he was against Öcalan’s 10-​ article disarmament draft (Yeğen 2015). Following Erdoğan’s criticism, the AKP government declared that it would take no further steps until the disarmament of the PKK. In the general elections held on June 7, 2015, the HDP got 13% of the votes, becoming the first pro-​Kurdish political party to pass the 10% electoral threshold. In July 2015, following an ISIS bombing in Suruç (a town located on Turkey’s Syrian border in the southeast) that killed 33 young people carrying aid to Kobanî, and the killing of two police officers in Șanlıurfa by the PKK,19 the ceasefire officially came to an end. On January 20, 2016, Erdoğan declared that the peace process was over, once and for all: “We will no longer be in touch with the terrorist organization, nor with ‘its party’ [alluding to the HDP],” he said; “that project is over!”20 From July 20, 2015, to September 19, 2017, 3,132 people, 417 of whom were civilians, died in the clashes.21 18 Kadri Gürsel, “Is Turkey Heading Toward Civil War?” Al-​Monitor, September 13, 2015. https://​ www.al-​monitor.com/​pulse/​originals/​2015/​09/​turkey-​pkk-​clashes-​heading-​to-​turk-​kurd-​strife. html (retrieved September 29, 2017). 19 The PKK later denied any responsibility in the murder and claimed that it was undertaken without their knowledge, by an organization called the “Apoist Revenge Team.” The nine suspects on trial were all acquitted in 2019. For details, see https://​www.birgun.net/​haber/​cozum-​surecini-​ bitiren-​cinayet-​sis-​perdesi-​ardinda-​262529 (retrieved January 1, 2020). 20 “Erdoğan: Bundan sonraki süreçte ne terör örgütü ne de partisi asla muhatap alınmayacak”, in T24, January 20, 2016, http://​t24.com.tr/​haber/​erdoğan-​bundan-​sonraki-​surecte-​ne-​teror-​orgutu-​ ne-​de-​partisi-​asla-​muhatap-​alinmayacak-​o-​is-​bitti,324930 (retrieved January 22,  2016). 21 Numbers taken from http://​www.crisisgroup.be/​interactives/​turkey/​ on September 29, 2017.

10 Introduction Between August 16, 2015, and August 17, 2017, a total of 252 round-​the-​ clock curfews had been imposed on 11 cities and towns22 and thousands of people were internally displaced. Interestingly, among the plethora of works focusing on the Kurdish conflict in Turkey (Aydın and Emrence 2015; Barkey and Fuller 2000; Bilgin and Sarıhan 2013; Gambetti and Jongerden 2015; Güneş 2012; Güneş and Zeydanlıoğlu 2013; Günter 1990, 1997; Kirişçi and Winrow 1997; Marcus 2007; Olson 1996; Romano 2006; Somer 2004; Tezcür and Gürses 2017; Ünver 2015; Yeğen 2007), only a few turn their attention to the role of religion in the conflict (Al 2019; Bilici 2017; Çiçek 2016; Gourlay 2018; Gürses 2015; Sarıgil and Fazlıoğlu 2013; Yavuz and Özcan 2006; Yıldız 2016). As valuable as this latter groups of works is, with the exception of Sarıgil (2018) and Somer and Glüpker-​Kesebir (2016), all tend to center their analysis exclusively around empirical findings or descriptive narratives, shying away from comprehensively discussing the implications of these findings for theoretical debates about ethnicity, religion, conflict, and identity formation. Although I share their hesitancy in generalizing from the Turkish case, I also believe that it could still serve as a departure point to develop an insightful dialogue with the literature on the relationship between religion, ethnicity, and national identity, in general, and on symbolic boundary making, identity formation, and the role of religion in conflict resolution, more specifically. To that end, in what follows, I first situate the Turkish case in the broader debates on religion and conflict resolution, and then I employ Bourdieusian field theory to analyze it. After tying these discussions to the literature on the formation and conceptualization of religious and ethnic identities and the classification of the interactions between the two, especially in ethnic conflict zones, I end this introductory chapter with a short section on the organization of the book. For analytical purposes, I define “ethnicity” as the individual level of identification with an ethnic group, where ethnic group stands for a self-​or other-​ defined “human group that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration” (Weber 1978:  389). An ethnic conflict is “a violent conflict between ethnic groups or between an ethnic group and government forces that consist of one or more ethnic 22 Numbers taken from http://​tihv.org.tr/​16-​agustos-​2015ten-​bugune-​2-​yilda-​ilan-​edilen-​sokaga-​ cikma-​yasaklari/​#_​ftn1 on September 29, 2017.

Introduction  11 groups” (Byman, quoted in Jesse and Williams 2011: 7). While any attempt at providing a satisfying definition of religion is doomed to fail, following Brubaker (2013), in this book I use religion to refer to “organized religion,” more specifically to Abrahamic religions.

“The Ambivalence of the Sacred”:  Religion and Conflict Resolution Supranational religions, like Islam and Christianity, ask their followers to unite in their religious identity and not become divided.23 Yet, history has repeatedly shown us that groups belonging to the same religion can easily get into fights with each other (Hanf 1994). Even among groups who belong to the same sect, religious identity does not necessarily play a unifying role (Byrnes 2001) since other markers of difference, such as ethnicity, come into play (Shtromas 1992). For example, in ethnic conflicts between religiously homogenous groups, religion often fails to act as a conflict-​resolution tool, a unifying supranational identity that could help put an end to the conflict (Aspinall 2009; Gürses 2015; Gürses and Rost 2017). Any inquiry into why this is so first and foremost requires that we turn our attention to the broader literature about the role of religion in conflicts. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, ethnic conflicts spread throughout the former Soviet bloc. Slowly but gradually, the “false national unity” of the nation-​state (Jenkins and Gottlieb 2007: 9) gave way to a flourishing of ethnic uprisings and an increasing awareness of ethnic identity. As of 1992, about 40 violent ethnic conflicts were being fought in 29 countries (Hoffman 1992: 26). Disrupting the “long postwar peace” (Gaddis 1987), 115 of the 225 conflicts that occurred between 1946 and 2001 took place in the 12-​year-​period between 1989 and 2001 (Gleditsch et al. 2002), with the absolute number of conflicts peaking in the early 1990s (Blattman and Miguel 2010). Between 1989 and 2017, “an average of twenty intrastate wars have been in progress at any moment—​about ten times the annual average globally between 1861 and 1989” (Armitage 2017: 5). As a result, the late 1990s and the early 2000s witnessed an unprecedented increase in the publication of works on instrastate conflicts and civil wars (Balcells and Kalyvas 2014; Cederman and Vogt 2017; Canestaro 2016; Collier and

23 This section is broadly based on Türkmen 2019.

12 Introduction Hoeffler 1998; Kalyvas 2006, 2007, 2011, 2017; Kaufmann 1996; Sambanis 2002, 2004). Operating under the impact of the secularization thesis (Berger 1967; Bruce 2011; Martin 1978), and treating religion as an aspect of ethnicity (Fox 2000), scholars of conflict, for a long time, focused on ethnicity as their subject matter (Berberoglu 2004; Byman 2000; Chapman and Roeder 2007; Coakley 1992; Eriksen 2010; Fearon and Laitin 2003; Gurr 1993; Jesse and Williams 2011; Laitin 2007; Lake and Rothschild 1998; Olzak 1992; Wimmer 1997; Wimmer and Min 2006). Although the primary cause of armed conflicts, up until the early 2000s, was indeed ethnicity (Wimmer et al. 2009), in line with the “worldwide revival of religion” (Berger 1999; Casanova 1994; Westerlund 1996), between 1995 and 2000, religion acted as a major exacerbating factor, increasing the mean level of rebellion by about 67% (Fox 2004). Since 2002, religious domestic conflicts have been a majority of all such conflicts (Fox 2012). As a result, in the 1990s, scholars started to integrate the study of religion into the overall framework of conflict (Barber 1996; Huntington 1996; Juergensmeyer 1993; Kepel 1994; Marty and Appleby 1995; Seul 1999). Yet, the real boom in this field was to come in the early 2000s. Especially after 9/​11, but also before that, there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of works focusing on religion and conflict (Fox and Sandler 2006; Fox and Squires 2001; Hall et  al. 2000; Hasenclever and Rittberger 2000; Marty and Appleby 1997; Svensson 2012). Following Appleby, who has drawn attention to the “ambivalence of the sacred” (2000), two groups of works have emerged: (a) those focusing on the role of religion as a trigger for, and an exacerbating factor, in the conflict, and (b) those focusing on religion as a conflict-​resolution tool.

Religion as a Trigger for and an Exacerbating Factor in Conflict Early works on religion and conflict tended to discuss the issue under macro-​scale titles such as terrorism and fundamentalism (Hoffman 1995; Juergensmeyer 2000; Little 1996; Pratt 2006; Rapoport 1984, 1991; Stern 2003), or “clash of civilizations” (Huntingon 1996).24 This early stage also saw the publication of case studies scrutinizing the role of religion in bringing 24 Note that Huntington’s thesis has been put to test and debunked by several scholars. See Fox 2001, 2012, and Reynal-​Querol 2002.

Introduction  13 about conflict in places like Sri Lanka (Little 1994), Bosnia (Sells 1996), Rwanda (Longman 2001), Liberia (Ellis 2002), and Indonesia (Sidel 2006). Since the early 2000s, numerous works challenging this generalizing approach have started to emerge. Most analyses agree that there is a broad correlation between religion and conflict, and that once religion enters into the picture, conflicts become more difficult to settle peacefully (Hassner 2009; Svensson 2007; Toft 2007). However, because the correlation between religion and conflict often lacks a robust statistical significance (Ellingsen 2005; Svensson 2013) scholars argue that, rather than religious beliefs or ideologies, we should focus on the mechanisms that bring about this correlation. To that aim, some researchers scrutinize whether and how religion increases the probability (Fox 2003; Ellingsen 2005; Fearon and Laitin 2003) and the intensity (Fox 2004; Horowitz 2009; Pearce 2005; Roeder 2003; Toft 2007) of conflict. Some focus on religious “fractionalization/​fragmentation” (Collier and Hoeffler 2004), “polarization” (Reynal-​Querol 2002), religious networks (Canetti et  al. 2010), religious discrimination (Akbaba and Taydas 2011), and organizational factors/​ mobilizing resources (e.g., finances, recruitment, leadership) (Basedau et al. 2016; De Juan and Hasenclever 2015; Stark and Bainbridge 1980)  as explanatory variables. Others argue that religion becomes an exacerbating factor when it overlaps with other cleavages, such as ethnicity (Basedau et al. 2011; Bernauer 2016; Fox 1997, 2000, 2002; Gurr 1993; see Gorski and Türkmen-​Dervişoğlu 2013 for a review of this literature). Yet others assert that religion might be a more meaningful variable in explaining how conflicts escalate, rather than how they start (Svensson 2013; Harpviken and Roislien 2008). Complicating this narrative, Matthew Isaacs (2016) questions the link of causality between religion and violence. His data demonstrate that religious rhetoric does not increase the probability of violence; rather, “violent organizations strategically adopt religious rhetoric” (2016: 222).

Religion as a Conflict-​Resolution Tool Meanwhile, a smaller branch of the literature has turned its attention to the other side of the coin: the role of religion in soothing conflict. Building on the supposition that “virtually all religious traditions incorporate ideals of peace and promise peace as the outcome of their application” (Kadayifci-​Orellana 2009: 274), an increasing number of scholars have focused on religion as a

14 Introduction tool of conflict resolution (Alger 2002; Assefa 1990; Basedau and De Juan 2008; Carter and Smith 2004; Goldberg and Blancke 2011; Gopin 1997, 2000; Little and Appleby 2004; Omer et  al. 2015; Philpott 2007; Svensson 2007, 2013). At the center of these analyses lies the question of how religion influences peacemaking (Brewer et al. 2010). To answer this question, scholars usually focus on reconciliation efforts by religious institutions (Brewer et al. 2011; De Juan et al. 2015) and religious actors (Abu-​Nimer and Kadayifci-​Orellana 2008; Bercovitch and Kadayifci-​Orellana 2009; Harpviken and Roislien 2008; Haynes 2009; Little 2007; Shore 2009; Toft et al. 2011). According to Sampson (1997), religious organizations and actors have four main roles in bringing about peace: They act as (a) advocates of peace, (b) intermediaries, (c) observers, and (d) educators. Thanks to their cultural and spiritual capital, religious actors often have a high degree of leverage and legitimacy among community members, which empowers them in peace negotiations (Sandal 2017; Svensson 2016). Usually religious actors’ active participation in peace efforts is explained by theological teachings on peace, religious norms, or the beliefs of religious elites (Butselaar 2005; Ter Haar 2005). Yet, not all religious actors become involved in conflict resolution (Lee 2015). In pondering why this is so, Harpviken and Roislien (2008) underline the role of “opportunity structures,” while De Juan and Vullers (2010) demonstrate the importance of strategic considerations. It is in this context that Turkey’s Kurdish conflict becomes important for the literature on religion and conflict.

The Porous Borders of Religion and Ethnicity As valuable as this line of scholarship is, it is heavily dominated by political scientists and international relations scholars who embrace a macro-​ scale approach that pays inadequate attention to the meso-​level actors and micro-​level dynamics of identity formation in conflict zones.25 To remedy this shortcoming, I turn toward the sociological literature on collective identities and symbolic boundary construction (Bail 2008; Lamont and Fournier 1992; Lamont and Molnar 2002). I specifically make use of Wimmer’s theory of ethnic boundary making (Wimmer 2008, 2009, 2013) in which Wimmer mentions five possible strategies actors might pursue in constructing

25 This section is based on Türkmen 2018.

Introduction  15 symbolic boundaries:  boundary expansion, boundary contraction, inversion of the hierarchical ordering of ethnic groups, repositioning one’s status within an existing hierarchical boundary system, and blurring boundaries so as to undermine the importance of ethnic boundaries. Filling in his empirically void framework with concrete findings, I shed light on how ethnic and religious boundaries are negotiated in the Kurdish conflict in Turkey. This literature, which employs a processual and culturalist approach in scrutinizing how identities are formed, maintained, and negotiated (Alba 1990; Becker 2014; Bernstein 2005; Brubaker 2002; Nagel 1994; Özgen 2015; Sanders 2002; Wimmer 2009), provides useful conceptual tools for analyzing the role of religion in conflict resolution, and the relationship between religion and ethnicity. Yet, most works in this strand employ “ethnicity” as an expansive term covering a vast array of identities, including religion (see Wimmer 2013). Pointing to the difficulty of defining ethnicity as an analytical category and building on the assumption that religious and ethnic identities overlap too closely to allow for any meaningful analytical distinction (Hanf 1994; Watson and Boag 2000), social scientists working on boundary making (Bail 2008; Bauböck and Rundell 1998; Lamont and Fournier 1992; Lamont and Molnar 2002; Lichterman 2008; Wimmer 2008, 2009, 2013) usually put forward a “generalizing stance” (Brubaker 2015) that tends to employ ethnicity as an umbrella term covering a vast array of identity markers including religion, race, and national identity (Chandra 2006; Horowitz 1985). By doing so, they overlook the complex relationship between religious and ethnic identities (see Ruane and Todd 2010, 2011, for an exception).26 While it is true that religious and ethnic identities usually overlap and function as nested identities (Feldman 1979; Herb and Kaplan 1999)—​especially in cases like the Palestinian-​Israeli conflict or the Northern Ireland conflict (Coakley 2002)—​in a field like conflict studies, “to bundle together religion and ethnicity is to fail to recognize the distinctive character each brings to symbolic distinction and social division” (Ruane and Todd 2010: 2). This is not to reify religion and ethnicity or to claim that religious and ethnic identities are immutable, concrete entities. To the contrary, I subscribe 26 This tendency has its roots in the mid-​twentieth century, when American sociologists (e.g., Glazer and Moynihan 1963; Warner and Lunt 1941) came to use “ethnic group” to refer to “nearly any discernible minority, religious, linguistic or otherwise” (Connor 1994: 101). Such a flexible definition led to the idea that it is futile to try to separate religious and ethnic identity from each other (Enloe 1996). Hence, while Gans talks about “Jewish and Catholic ethnics” (1979: 2–​3), Smith (1993) lists the Shi‘a as an ethnic group, and Jesse and Williams (2011: 11) give Protestants and Catholics as examples of “ethnic groups.”

16 Introduction to the belief that identities are constructed and constantly reconstructed according to the changing context, conditions, and opportunities (Barth 1969; Laitin 1998). As such, they are ongoing “processes” that require a relational analysis (Brubaker 2002). Precisely because of this fuzziness, it is quite hard to distinguish one from the other in some cases. Yet, there are important differences between religiously and ethnically mobilized conflicts (Brubaker 2015; Stewart 2009), and overlooking what constitutes the “religious” or “ethnic” component of the conflict would result in incorrect conclusions about these conflicts in particular, and about the relationship between religion, ethnicity, and violence in general. Attending to these differences is not only vital in understanding the origins of conflicts, but also in putting an end to them. Without scrutinizing how people in conflict areas negotiate, navigate, and envision ethnic and religious boundaries, and how these identities “happen” (Brubaker 2002), we can comprehend neither the divisive nor the unifying nature of these identities. Consider, for instance, the Pomaks in Bulgaria: While they are Bulgarian-​ speaking Slavs, they are Muslims, in contrast to most Bulgarians, who are Orthodox Christians. Yet this does not prevent scholars from defining them as “a Muslim ethnic group” (Turan 1999: 69). The same goes for various different communities living in multicultural countries. In Croatia, for example, there is a small group of Orthodox Croats who share the same ethnicity with Catholic Croats but are not deemed to be as “Croat” as the latter. Orthodox Albanians in Muslim-​majority Albania share the same fate. The same applies to Spain, where the Basque people and the Castilians share the same religious identity (Catholic) but differ from each other ethnically. As these cases make clear, if one reason for the confusion over the usages of religion and ethnicity is the focus on communities and conflicts where religious and ethnic identities overlap, another important, and related, reason is the lack of focus on cases where religious and ethnic identities do not necessarily overlap, where groups share a common religious background but different ethnicities, or vice versa. If we turned our gaze to these communities we could learn more about how religious and ethnic identities are conceptualized and negotiated. My data reveal that the different conceptualizations of ethnic and religious identities by Kurdish and Turkish religious and political elites play an important role in limiting the impact of Sunni Islam as a conflict-​resolution tool in the Kurdish conflict in Turkey. For example, although all religious elites I interviewed agree that “Muslim fraternity” could help end the conflict by

Introduction  17 bringing closer Sunni Muslim Turks and Kurds, they differ significantly in their claims about how this could be accomplished, as their interpretations of Islamic teachings on ethnicity and an overarching Muslim identity differ vastly. While some of my interviewees clearly distinguish between ethnicity (as a secular identity) and religious identity (as a supranational identity overarching ethnic differences), some claim that religious and ethnic identities are inseparable in that ethnicity is God-​given; they deem the existence of different ethnic identities as God’s will. In this, they substitute to what I call a “religio-​ethnic” identity. Yet others display an “ethno-​religious” approach that prioritizes Turkish identity and sees Turks as “the leaders of the Muslim ummah.” For them, ethnicity and religion are interwoven but separable, as ethnicity trumps religious identity. It is not just Islam, but Turkish Islam that matters for them. By establishing a direct link between Islam and Turkishness, they are contributing to an inculturation process (Roy 2010) whereby Muslim identity is situated in and linked to a specific culture (Turkish culture in this case). These findings indicate that it would be misleading to use ethnicity as an umbrella term in the Kurdish conflict. Hence, I categorize the religious and political elites’ conceptualizations of ethnic and religious identities as follows: (1) religio-​ethnic; (2) ethno-​religious; (3) religious; and (4) secular-​ethnic (see Table I.1). I claim that the different conceptualizations in this typology, along with some other political and historical factors (which I  further elaborate in Chapters 1, 3, and 4), play an important role in limiting the impact of Sunni Islam as a conflict-​resolution tool in the Kurdish conflict in Turkey. By bringing forth a more nuanced approach to the relationship between religious and ethnic identities, especially by introducing the category of “religio-​ ethnic” identity, this typology also complements the sociological theories that overlook the gradations in the convergence and divergence of religion and ethnicity. Rather than confine research to “ethno-​religious” identity, which privileges ethnicity as an umbrella term giving birth to subcategories, it suggests that “religio-​ethnic” identity, which privileges religion by tracing ethnicity specifically to God, is equally important to understand. I argue that ethnic and religious identity formation, in this fourfold typology, depends on two interrelated and complementary mechanisms: (1) the way in which religious teachings/​texts are interpreted by religious and political elites, and (2) the type of strategy used by these elites in boundary making. These two mechanisms work together to determine the resulting identity category. Taken at face value, the elites’ accounts would suggest that

18 Introduction Table I.1  Identity Categories (among the Elites) in the Kurdish Conflict Identity Type

Group/​Affiliation

Strategy of Ethnic Boundary Making

Conceptualization of Ethnicity

Non-​state-​appointed Kurdish imams, state-​ appointed Kurdish imams, non-​affiliated Turkish and Kurdish Muslim elites Ethno-​religious State-​appointed Turkish imams, non-​ affiliated Turkish Muslim elites

Boundary contraction (not “Muslims” but “Kurdish Muslims”)

God-​given (fıtrî); builds on and inseparable from religious identity

Hierarchical ordering of ethnicity (Turks > Kurds)

Religious

Non-​affiliated Kurdish Muslim elites, state-​appointed Kurdish imams

Secular-​ethnic

Kurdish political elites affiliated with the Kurdish movement

Boundary blurring/​ universalism (not “Kurdish Muslims” but “Muslims”) Boundary expansion (not “Muslim Kurds” but “Kurds”)

Superior to religious identity (if Turkish); subordinate to religious identity (if Kurdish) Artificial; divisive and harmful for religious unity

Religio-​ethnic

Completely distinct from religious identity

the interpretation of religious texts determines the type of boundary-​making strategy they use. For example, a cleric who prioritizes the Qur’anic verses on the existence of different ethnicities over those verses that ask for Muslim fraternity would embrace “boundary contraction” as a boundary-​making strategy. Yet, because the broader political context requires that elites’ accounts be subject to further scrutiny, I would argue that the direction of the relationship between the two mechanisms can actually go both ways. Elites might employ a certain boundary-​making strategy because they interpret religious teachings in a certain way, or they might interpret religious teachings in a way that would align with their preferred boundary-​making strategy (e.g., elites who employ “boundary blurring” would prioritize the Qur’anic verses that focus on Muslim unity). It could be speculated that one of the main factors that lie behind the elites’ preference for a certain interpretation or a boundary-​making strategy is their political stance regarding the Kurdish conflict. Yet, neither ethnicity nor affiliation suffices to explain how an actor

Introduction  19 would conceptualize religious and ethnic identities, and which category they would fall into. Although ethnicity plays an important role in that most of the Kurdish religious elites promote the religio-​ethnic identity and most of the Turkish elites promote the ethno-​religious one, it still fails to account for the whole picture, as there are some Turkish religious elites who also belong in the former category. Furthermore, those Kurdish elites who foreground ethnicity do not choose ethnicity over religious identity only because doing so is in their interest, as suggested by instrumentalist approaches (Olzak 1992; Cornell and Hartman 1998; Posner 2005) or because it is the identity under threat, as suggested by situationalist approaches (Okamura 1981; Hechter 1987). Affiliation fails to act as the sole explanatory factor as well. There are state-​ appointed and non-​state-​appointed Kurdish imams, as well as non-​affiliated Kurdish and Turkish religious elites, among those who advocate the religio-​ ethnic identity. Yet, this does not preclude these groups from diverging in their stance toward the Kurdish movement in general, and the Civil Friday Prayers in particular. While most state-​appointed Kurdish and Turkish imams disapprove of the Civil Friday Prayers and stay aloof to the Kurdish movement, most non-​state-​appointed Kurdish imams are sympathetic to both. Similarly, while all Turkish religious elites who are state-​affiliated advocate for the ethno-​religious identity, there are also some non-​affiliated Turkish elites who do as well. Lastly, the Kurdish religious elites who advocate supranational religious identity comprise both non-​affiliated and state-​affiliated  ones. With these findings I not only demonstrate how complex the gradations between religious and ethnic identities can become, but also challenge the simplistic assumptions that supranational religious identities are always bound to fail in the face of ethnic differences because (a) religious identity is subordinate to ethnic identity (Demerath 2000; Gans 1979, 1994), and (b) ethnic difference inevitably becomes more important in religiously homogeneous communities to emphasize the “us–​them” dichotomy (Tajfel and Turner 1979). By doing so, I also further the debates on the strength of supranational religious identities and the formation of imagined communities of believers, be it the Muslim ummah (Rudolph and Piscatori 1997; Mandaville 2001; Roy 2004; Saunders 2008), a global Catholic community (Casanova 2005), or a Pentecostal global South (Vasquez et  al. 2003). Rather than analyzing the impact of supranational identity on immigrant groups or on transnational

20 Introduction religious networks, I  shift the focus to religiously homogenous ethnic conflicts where there is a sharper clash of identities and where one’s loyalties and sense of belonging are constantly in question. Situating the Turkish case in the debates on the clash between the universalism of religious identities and the particularism of ethnic identities, I demonstrate the complex mechanisms of identity formation in conflict zones and shed light on the limits of religious unity.

The Shifting Borders of Religious and Political Fields While the different conceptualizations of ethnic and religious identities by Sunni Muslim Turkish and Kurdish elites, as well as by political elites, definitely play an important role in limiting the unifying impact of Sunni Islam as a supranational identity, it would be misleading to claim that it is the only reason that has hindered the deployment of religion as a successful conflict resolution tool in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict. Certain structural factors, like the establishment of an autonomus Kurdish region in Syria and the non-​ transparency of the peace negotiations, as well as the historical evolution of both Kurdish and Turkish nationalisms and the post-​2002 changes in the religious and political fields in Turkey, also deserve attention. That is why I turn to Bourdieusian field theory that pays utmost attention to actors in a given field as much as to their positions and their relations. In this theoretical framework, a field (usually envisioned as a battlefield or a playing field) stands for “a network or configuration of objective relations between positions [which] are objectively defined in their existence and in the determinations they impose upon their occupants, agents, or institutions by their present and potential situation in the structure of the distribution of species of power (or capital) whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field, as well as by their objective relation to other positions” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992:  97). Using field theory as a heuristic tool, I argue that the debate between the religious and political elites in Turkey as to the conceptualization of ethnicity and religious identity can be seen as a mutual entanglement between the political field, dominated by the state, and a relatively autonomous religious field in which the religious elites, as autonomous agents, have intra-​religious disputes as to whose interpretations of the Qur’an and hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) are more authentic, and whose conceptualization of ethnicity

Introduction  21 is more Islamic. What made the emergence of this competitive religious field possible, I argue, is the governmental turn toward Islam. As I show later in the book, under the AKP rule the predominantly secularist structure of the Turkish state has undergone a transformation so as to accommodate more space for religion and make this internal debate publicly visible. As “the structure of relations between the religious field and the field of power controls the configuration of the structure of relations constitutive of the religious field” (Bourdieu 1991: 31), I claim that a decade and a half of AKP rule has changed the internal dynamics between Sunni Muslim groups in Turkey. Moreover, Kurdish Muslims who used to blame the secular nation-​state for the ethnic discrimination they were experiencing hoped that the AKP, as a religious party, would put an end to this discrimination; when the AKP embraced as nationalist a discourse as the secularists, they were highly disappointed. Because “the theological subfield itself is a field of competition” (Bourdieu 1991: 27), this whole debate can then be seen as a dispute over religious capital and spiritual authority as Bourdieu envisions it (see Table 3.2 in Chapter 3). By challenging each other’s interpretations of Islamic teachings on ethnicity, religious elites are trying to display who has more “knowledgeable mastery” (Bourdieu 1991: 10) over this issue. In light of these findings, I argue that the role of supranational religious identity in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict can be adequately explored only via an analysis that gives as much emphasis to meso-​level institutional changes and religious and political actors as to the macro-​level religious doctrine itself, along with the micro-​level workings of identity construction. Dismissing any of these three levels would result in an incomplete understanding of the role of religion in identity formation in ethnic conflicts.

Organizational Structure The rest of the book is structured as follows:  Chapter  1 opens with the analogy of “Green Kemalism,” used by some Kurdish political elites to criticize the AKP’s Muslim fraternity project. Arguing that the AKP is no different than the founders of the Turkish Republic in its intention to assimilate Kurds, this line of thinking claims that the AKP differs from Kemalists only in its employment of religion to that end (hence the allusion to “Green”). To provide the historical and political background needed to make sense of this

22 Introduction metaphor, the chapter then provides a detailed historical account of the role Islam has played in the Kurdish revolts and in the way the state27 has handled them since the late nineteenth century until 2002. Chapter  2 turns its gaze to the supranational “religious” identity and scrutinizes the contours of the Muslim unity project. Through interview data, it demonstrates how the belief in “Islam as cement” comes to life in the discourses of several religious elites, who, regardless of their ethnicity, characterize Sunni Islam as an overarching supranational identity and see Muslim fraternity as the only solution to the Kurdish conflict. Citing certain hadiths and verses from the Qur’an, they reproduce the belief that Sunni Islam could indeed bridge the ethnic divide between Kurds and Turks. To provide some historical context, the chapter goes on to analyze this discourse in relation to the Muslim ummah and Ottoman pan-​Islamism. Lastly, building on systematic analysis of statements by AKP cadres—​mostly by President Erdoğan—​it demonstrates how the AKP came to embrace a pan-​Islamic solution to the Kurdish conflict, what steps it took toward accomplishing it, and how its attitude toward Kurds compares to that of the Ottomans toward their Muslim subjects. Chapter 3 introduces “religio-​ethnic” identity via a focus on Civil Friday Prayers as “contentious performances” (Tilly 2008). Following the lead of Peter Berger, who in The Sacred Canopy (1967) described religion as both a “world-​maintaining” and a “world-​shaking” force capable of legitimizing or challenging power, it provides an overview of how the institutional and policy changes introduced during the AKP rule made possible the employment of Islam as a tool of resistance in the hands of Civil Friday Prayer imams. Building on interviews with these imams as well as observations from Friday prayers, it draws attention to the imams as autonomous agents of contestation who have turned religion from a tool of assimilation into a tool of nonviolent resistance. Though acknowledging Islam’s capacity to unite, these imams are quite suspicious of the Muslim unity discourse. By quoting Qur’anic verses and hadiths that highlight ethnicity as a religious, God-​given (fıtrî) identity, they claim that rejecting one’s Kurdish identity and assimilating into Turkish culture means going against God’s will. Hence, rather than the ethno-​religious approach, these imams promote a “religio-​ethnic” 27 I  am well aware of the differences between the late Ottoman state and that of the Turkish Republic. Yet, as I demonstrate later in the book, there is continuity in the way the late Ottoman and Republican states have employed Islam in handling Kurdish demands; hence my use of “the state” as a continuous, unspecified entity.

Introduction  23 identity, which traces the origins of ethno-​national identity back to religious identity. As such, “religio-​ethnic” identity functions as an important reason for the weakness of Islam as a unifying identity in Turkey. Chapter 4 revolves around “ethno-​religious” identity and argues that another reason the idea of Muslim unity does not work well in the Kurdish conflict is the strength of Turkish nationalism among Turkish religious elites. Through interview data, this chapter displays how Turkish religious elites, who seemingly advocate Islamic unity, end up privileging Turkish ethnic identity upon further interrogation. While they discursively promote Muslim unity, in practice they advocate a Muslim identity very much shaped by Turkish nationalism. With the help of a historical overview, the chapter explains in detail how this attitude and the endurance of Turkish nationalism among Turkish Muslims has its roots in the formation of the Turkish nation-​ state as a Sunni Muslim entity (Lord 2018; Ünlü 2016, 2018). It then turns its gaze to the Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (TIS) and goes back as early as the mid-​ nineteenth century to trace the emergence of Turkish nationalism and its merger with Islam. The second part of the chapter scrutinizes how the AKP’s discourse on the Kurdish conflict has oscillated from one characterized by Islamic-​Turkish synthesis to one characterized by Turkish-​Islamic synthesis. Through a systematic analysis of newspapers and public statements, it documents how the AKP has replaced its emphasis on “Muslim fraternity” with an emphasis on Turkish-​Muslim nationalism. The concluding chapter summarizes the main findings and contributions of the book. It reiterates that although Turks and Kurds might seem to be “united in religion, divided by ethnicity,” the data at hand demonstrate that identity dynamics in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict are more complex than meets the eye. Building on this discussion, it goes on to briefly debate how the political developments in Turkey since the resumption of clashes in 2015 might influence the future of the conflict and the role of Islam in it. Lastly, it highlights the relevance of this case to understanding the relationship between religion and ethnicity in other similar cases, such as the role of Catholicism in the Basque conflict.

1 “Green Kemalism” The Evolving Role of Islam in the Kurdish Conflict

The first day of my field research in Diyarbakır: After a filling breakfast at my Suriçi hotel, I am headed toward the town hall of Sur, the city’s oldest neighborhood.1 My hotel is conveniently located at the heart of Sur. It takes me only a couple of minutes to walk to the town hall. Made of Diyarbakır’s signature basalt stones, the town hall welcomes its visitors with multilingual signs in Turkish, Kurdish, Assyrian, and Armenian. I later learn that, under BDP rule, the municipality has started implementing multilingual services as a tribute to the city’s long-​lost diversity. (Up until the end of World War I, Ottoman Diyarbakır’s cosmopolitan population comprised Turks, Kurds, Zazas, Armenians, Assyrians, Arabs, Jews, and Greek-​Orthodox.) Upon entering the building, a smiling young woman greets me in Kurmancî. I smile at her and say, in Turkish, that I cannot speak Kurdish. “Oh, I am so sorry,” she says, switching to Turkish, “I thought you are Kurdish.” This becomes the first in a series of similar conversations in the region where I am usually greeted in Kurdish and have to ashamedly declare that I cannot speak Kurmancî. Five minutes later, I am having tea with a BDP official, Ali, in a spacious office. I am there to talk with him about Civil Friday Prayers, as my contacts in İstanbul had told me that Sur municipality could put me in touch with Civil Friday Prayer imams. A friendly guy in his late fifties, Ali is telling me about his personal history as a human rights activist: the years he had to spend in prison, the “bloody 90s” (as he calls them) during which he lost several friends and relatives in the armed clashes between the PKK and the TSK: the nephew who lost his life while fighting in the ranks of the TSK, during his mandatory military service, the nephew who died while fighting in the ranks of the PKK, friends who are imprisoned for life, who had to flee the country, who died under torture in the 1980s. He is angry and sad, yet quite 1 I would like to thank Yektan Türkyılmaz for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

Under the Banner of Islam. Gülay Türkmen, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197511817.003.0002.

“Green Kemalism”  25 composed. One can hear simultaneous tones of disappointment and hope in his voice. He has the disposition of a person who has devoted a considerable portion of his life for a “cause,” who has sacrificed a lot for that “cause,” yet still continues to believe in that “cause” and would do whatever it takes to accomplish it. “I know I can’t bring all my loved ones back,” he says, “but it would make me happy to know that their death was not for nothing, that they succeeded in bringing about a positive change, albeit small.” “Don’t you think they did?” I ask. “I mean, the state of emergency is no longer; unprecedented and unthinkable developments, like the 2010 Oslo peace talks between the Turkish intelligence officers and the PKK, have taken place. The Oslo talks have failed, but still, people seem more hopeful about a peaceful end to this conflict than they did in the 1990s. Right?” I wait for confirmation. Instead, I get a cynical “Ha! You think so?” This catches me off guard. I do not want to say something that would hurt his feelings or undermine the importance of his take on the subject, especially because I am Turkish, I was born and raised in Western Turkey, and have never been to Diyarbakır, or any other Kurdish-​majority city before. “Damn you!” I start an inner fight with myself, “who are you to tell him ‘how things have improved since the 1990s,’ who are you to come to this conclusion, only by reading and watching about the region from afar?” He is still looking at me, anticipating an answer. “Well, that is the impression I got, by following the news,” I manage to stutter. He takes a deep breath, puts a wry smile on his face, and says, “It is true that things are better, yet, only to a certain extent. As you know, the ceasefire between the PKK and the TSK came to an end last summer and intense clashes are going on even as we speak; thousands of our friends have been taken into custody, detained, and put in prison in the incessant KCK2 trials. So, it is hard to tell what is better, 2 Between 2009 and 2013, around 8,000 Kurdish politicians, intellectuals, and activists have been detained under the Kurdistan Communities Union (Koma Civakên Kurdistan/​KCK) trials, with accusations ranging from “membership in a terrorist organization” to “helping a terrorist organization” and “leading/​directing a terrorist organization.” Some of them have been acquitted; some have been convicted and are currently in prison. The KCK is the umbrella group for all Öcalanist Kurdish parties in Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq, including the PKK (Turkey), PYD (Syria), PJAK (Iran), and PCDK (Iraq). Formed in 2007 at the Fifth Congress of the Kurdistan People’s Congress (Kongra Gelê Kurdistan/​Kongra-​Gel) in Qandil, the KCK replaced the Peoples’ Confederation of Kurdistan (Koma Komalên Kurdistan/​KKK) formed in 2005. In a report he wrote for the Turkish Foundation of Economic and Social Studies (Türkiye Ekonomik ve Sosyal Etüdler Vakfı/​TESEV), Cengiz Çandar writes that the KKK/​KCK originated during the reorganization of the PKK within the framework of the principle of “democratic confederalism,” as suggested by Abdullah Öcalan in his 2004 book Defending a Nation [Bir Halkı Savunmak]. Titled “Leaving the Mountain: How May the PKK Lay Down Arms?” the report can be accessed at:  http://​tesev.org.tr/​tr/​yayin/​ dagdan-​inis-​pkk-​nasil-​silah-​birakir/​

26  Under the Banner of Islam when we say ‘things are better.’ ” I continue my inner fight: “Learn to keep your mouth shut, let them talk before you tell them what you think!” There is an awkward silence in the room, so I go ahead and try to change the course of the conversation: “I see, I guess you are right. There are numerous reasons to tone down one’s optimism. Let us move on to the main issue that brought me here:  the Civil Friday Prayers. What do you think about them? How and why did they emerge?” I am quite curious about his answer, as he belongs to the secular socialist wing of the Kurdish movement (which sets him apart from the rest of my interviewees). “Let me first start by saying that Kurds, in general, have a quite positive attitude towards Islam. Even those Kurds who consider themselves secular and leftist would still use terms like Insha’allah or Masha’allah as Islam plays a dominant role in the formation of their cultural identity. Yet, Islam has always been used as a tool of assimilation and oppression against the Kurds. Whether in the form of Turkish-​Islamic, Arab-​Islamic, or Persian-​Islamic syntheses, those in power have always employed Islam to exterminate or dominate Kurds. That is why Kurds embrace a critical view of state Islam. For example, the Turkish state claims to be religious but it was the same state that closed down all the religious orders and madrasas—​school complexes where Islamic theology and religious law were taught—​in the region during the early years of the Republic. Embracing the same mentality, the current government is trying to ban the Civil Friday Prayers. AKP officials claim to be religious, but in practice, they are far from that. Civil Friday Prayers symbolize the Kurds’ attempt to practice their religion without giving up their own culture and language. That is why the state finds them disturbing. With this ban the state is saying: ‘Either embrace my interpretation of religion or I will not let you practice any other version of religion!’ ” “The prayers have been banned only in İstanbul and other Western cities, right?” I ask. “As far as I know, prayers in Kurdish-​majority cities are still going on?” “Well, they are actually banned everywhere, but popular support for these prayers in this region is quite high and I think the government does not want to risk clashing with civilians at a prayer. That is why they are manipulating the masses with ridiculous claims such as ‘these prayers are not real,’ ‘Kurds are not religious,’ ‘Kurds are communists,’ ‘Kurds are Armenians.’ However, historically, the number of religious scholars among Kurds has been higher than among Turks. This is where ‘etatism’ enters the picture. The Turkish state has only supported Muslims whose interpretation of Islam is compatible

“Green Kemalism”  27 with that of its own. It has shunned oppositional interpretations, like Kurdish Islam. The attempted ban on Civil Friday Prayers is just one example. For a long time, in this country, the Diyanet used mosques to propagate Kemalism. What we are witnessing now is a continuation of this tendency.” “How so? I  mean, the Diyanet is currently heavily dominated by AKP bureaucrats, who are not necessarily known for their Kemalist practices,” I say. “Look, Kemalism and the AKP have much more in common than hits the eye at first glance. In the past, when I was actively involved in the leftist movement, Turkish socialists would ask us to suppress our own culture and identity. When we spoke Kurdish, they would accuse us of being chauvinists. ‘Highlighting Kurdish identity is against socialism. There is no Kurdish question; this is a question of class, and once we settle the class problem the Kurdish problem will automatically be resolved,’ they would say. Most of these socialists deemed themselves Kemalists, and under the façade of secular Kemalism they implemented a denial and assimilation policy. It took me years to see that socialism does not have to clash with a nation’s struggle for existence. The AKP is now employing the same logic. Under the disguise of Islamism they claim that once a Muslim ummah is established there will be no need for an emphasis on Kurdish identity; ‘there is no need for you to speak Kurdish,’ they say, ‘we are fellow Muslims, and that is what binds us.’ As one can see, while socialists deemed Kurds’ demands as incompatible with socialism, Islamists deem our demands as incompatible with Islam. No matter how intellectually different these two ideologies might seem, they actually share the same aim: assimilating Kurds and integrating them into the system. Plus, even the Kemalists made use of religion in suppressing Kurdish demands. A look at Republican history and the reactions to Kurdish rebellions would suffice to show this. In 1921, during the Koçgiri rebellion led by Alevi Kurds, the state told Sunni Kurds that the Koçgiri rebels were against the Ottoman Caliphate and shari‘a and should not be tolerated. Yet, a few years later, in 1925, when Sheikh Said and his friends revolted to protest the abolition of the Caliphate, the same state told Alevi Kurds that they should not support these ‘pro-​shari‘a, pro-​Caliphate Sunni Kurdish rebels who might cut the heads of Alevis if they were given the opportunity.’ Similarly, during the reign of Abdulhamid II, Sunni Kurds were deployed in the Hamidiye corps responsible for the massacre of Armenians in Eastern Anatolia. At the time, Muslim ulama issued fatwas stating, ‘whoever kills an Armenian goes to paradise.’ If it was that easy to go to paradise, why didn’t

28  Under the Banner of Islam Turkish soldiers get involved in these activities? Why were Kurds given this task? As is clear, since the late nineteenth century, both Ottoman and Turkish states have been employing Kurds’ piety for their own purposes and have been using religion as the ‘opium of the people.’ Yet, ironically, they now to resort to calling the same Kurds ‘atheists’ and ‘communists.’ To cut it short, when it comes to Kurdish demands, socialists have ignored the main tenets of socialism, while Islamists have ignored the main tenets of the Muslim ummah. Neither socialism nor the ummah rejects the concept of a nation or the attempt to preserve and improve a nation’s well-​being. They reject negative [menfi] nationalism. In this sense, there is continuity in the way the state has handled Kurdish demands. The hunters might have changed, but the prey has remained the same. In the past, it was the İttihat-​Terakki-​originating-​ Kemalists who tried to assimilate Kurds; nowadays, it is the Islamists, who ironically take pride in removing Kemalists from power. In my eyes, these Islamists are nothing but ‘Green Kemalists.’ ” Kemalists and Islamists alike would protest this metaphor and take it as an insult. Yet, Ali is quite adamant: “I swear to God that there is no difference between Kemalism and Green Kemalism, save for their methods and tools,” he goes on to say. “Kemalists used nationalism to assimilate Kurds; Islamists are using Islam to that end. Neither side cares about our demands. That is why Kurds are forced to look for out-​of-​the-​system alternatives, like Civil Friday Prayers.” Controversial as it may be, this metaphor summarizes the way some Kurdish religious elites think about the AKP’s Muslim fraternity project. These elites attribute the origins of the suffering of Kurds to the assimilationist aspirations of secular nationalist Kemalists. Their hope was that things would get better under a pro-​Islamist rule. Yet, when the AKP failed to fulfill their demands, they started to feel disillusioned; hence their emphasis on the supposed similarity between the attitudes of Kemalists and Islamists, as well as the deployment of Islam as a tool of assimilation in the hands of the state. I will come back to this discourse in more detail in Chapters 2 and 3. However, the main importance of Ali’s narrative stems from the fact that it includes almost all of the historical references I ran into in my later interviews. As such, it provides a nice opportunity to delve into the background of the Kurdish conflict and look for answers to some important questions his narrative raises: Why and how did the conflict come into being in the first place? What role has Islam played historically in the relations between Kurds and Turks? How has the state reacted to Kurdish demands throughout the history

“Green Kemalism”  29 of the Republic and even earlier, in the late Ottoman period? Under what conditions did the PKK emerge? When, why, and how has the PKK, a secular Marxist organization, started its rapprochement with Islam? With these questions in mind, in what follows, I provide a detailed historical background on the roots of the Kurdish conflict and the evolution of the role of Islam in it. I first shed light on the role Islam played in Kurdish revolts of the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. I then focus on the events that led to the secularization of the Kurdish movement between 1950 and 1978, when the PKK was founded. Lastly, I scrutinize the revival of Islam in the Kurdish movement between 1980 and 2002. The developments between the years 2002 and 2015 will be the subject of Chapters 2 and 3. Similarly, the following account omits the Turkish state’s relationship with Islam, which constitutes the subject of Chapter 4.

Kurdish Revolts in the Late Ottoman Period:  Against Centralization? The official narrative in Turkey tends to present the Kurdish conflict as a problem originating with the emergence of the PKK in the late 1970s. Yet, in order to better understand the present-​day conflict and Islam’s evolving role in it, one needs to look back as early as the nineteenth century, when the first Kurdish revolts took place. Organized against the centralizing tendencies of the Ottoman government (Atmaca 2019), these revolts were led by tribal leaders in Ottoman Kurdistan and were not yet nationalistic in character. During the reign of Sultan Mahmud II (1808–​1839), in an attempt to revitalize the weakening Ottoman Empire, a series of centralizing reforms were initiated. Mahmud’s program included the suppression of powerful hereditary vassals, among them the Kurdish leaders in the semiautonomous eastern emirates. Founded in the sixteenth century, these Kurdish emirates served the purpose of protecting the eastern frontiers of the Empire. However, by the eighteenth century, the local chiefs had turned their military fiefdoms into powerful hereditary holdings. Although they were subject to the central government, they refused to pay the required taxes and acted as independent entities. Hence, when in the 1800s the central government decided to abolish the emirates so as to “reconquer” these territories and bring them under direct control, Kurdish emirs initiated a series of revolts (Jwaideh 2006;

30  Under the Banner of Islam McDowall 2004; Özoğlu 2004; Bruinessen 1992; Galip 2015; see Chailand 1993 for a detailed historical account of the revolts). The first of these, the Baban Revolt (1806–​1808), was led by Abdurrahman Pasha of the Baban emirate (1649–​1851), which was located in the present-​ day territory of Iraqi Kurdistan and western Iran. While the principality nominally belonged to the Ottoman Empire throughout its history, its rulers yearned for greater independence (Bruinessen 1992). After the death of the Baban leader İbrahim Pasha in 1806, Ottoman authorities imposed a rival tribe member as Emir. In response, İbrahim Pasha’s nephew, Abdurrahman Pasha, led a three-​year offensive against the Ottoman army, only to be defeated and seek refuge in Iran. The principality lasted until 1851, when it was abolished as a result of the centralizing reforms. Shortly after the Baban Revolt, another influential revolt broke out in southern Kurdistan (Iraqi Kurdistan), led by Mir Muhammad of Rawanduz, leader of the Soran emirate, located between the Great Zab and the Iranian frontier. Mir Muhammad dreamed of leading the process of Kurdish unification and independence (Nezan 1993). To Muhammad’s advantage, Ottoman forces, significantly weakened by the Russian-​Ottoman wars of 1806–​1812 and 1828–​1829, were now preoccupied with the revolt of Muhammad Ali of Egypt, who in 1831 declared the de facto independence of Egypt from the Ottoman Empire. By the end of 1833, the Mir had taken full control of southern Kurdistan and had reached the borders of Bohtan, another influential Kurdish emirate. According to some sources (McDowall 2004; Jwaideh 2006), the Mir directly marched against the emirate of Bohtan, seizing Jazira bin Umar, and finding himself at war with Emir Bedir Khan. Other sources (Kendal 1993) claim that the Mir offered to Bedir Khan an alliance against the central Ottoman government. In any case, the Mir could not manage to go past the emirate of Bohtan. Following this confrontation with Bedir Khan, in 1834, Mir Muhammad advanced to Iran and managed to gain full control of Iranian Kurdistan, hence drawing the fury of both the Qajars and the Ottomans. In the summer of 1836, he retreated from Iran and returned to his own capital, Rawanduz, only to face there a significant Ottoman force led by Reşid Mehmed Pasha, former Grand Vizier and Sivas governor at the time. Although accounts diverge on the events leading to Mir Muhammad’s surrender, they all agree that some time after the summer of 1836, the Mir was taken to İstanbul in the custody of Reşid Mehmed Pasha. While in İstanbul, Mir Muhammad was promised the continued leadership of Soran, but later, on his way back home, he disappeared (and was believed to have been killed).

“Green Kemalism”  31 His brother Resul Bey succeeded him but could not prevent the Soran Principality from being abolished a few years later. While Mir Muhammad’s uprising is quite important in that it is considered one of the earliest proto-​nationalist Kurdish revolts (Eppel 2018), even more important is the role Islam played in the suppression of this uprising. Although various reasons lay behind the failure of the uprising—​the growing involvement of Russia and Britain in Ottoman affairs, the cessation of the belligerence between Iran and the Ottoman Empire, the accelerated reforms toward centralization, the lack of support by other Kurdish tribes (Eppel 2014)—​one of the most important reasons was the blow dealt to Mir Muhammad by the ulama in Rawanduz. Toward the end of the Kurdish-​ Ottoman war, the Ottoman leadership called on the Mir to stop the war and “seek a reconciliation amongst Muslims” (Kendal 1993: 20). Impressed by this appeal, mullahs and other religious figures withdrew their support from the Mir and announced that they would not be involved in fighting the army of the Caliph (alluding to the Ottoman Sultan). Several sources agree (Eppel 2014; Jwaideh 2006; Kendal 1993)  that the city mufti, Mulla Muhammad Khati, issued a fatwa in which he declared as infidels those who fought against the Ottoman forces. Following this pronouncement, most of the Mir’s troops are reported to have surrendered to the Ottomans. As such, the Ottoman leadership pragmatically made use of “Muslim fraternity” to suppress this uprising. Another important revolt in which Islam played an influential role was that of Bedir Khan Bey, the leader of the Bohtan emirate. Bedir Khan Bey was on quite good terms with the central government. However, after the Ottoman defeat against İbrahim Pasha of Egypt, making use of the fall of the Soran emirate and the de facto dissolution of the Hakkari emirate, he started to expand his area of influence. By the end of 1840, he had extended his influence over all of Ottoman Kurdistan and had struck alliances with emirs from Northern Kurdistan and Iranian Kurdistan (Kendal 1993). It would take only a few years for Bedir Khan’s relationship with the central government to deteriorate. Interestingly, Islam played an important role in bringing Bedir Khan’s downfall. Bedir Khan, who was a devout Muslim, forcefully tried to convert the Yazidis in his region to Islam (McDowall 2004) and then surrounded himself with these converts, whom he trusted more than his tribe members (Jwaideh 2006). Because of his religious fanaticism he was easily influenced by the ulama (Eppel 2014), who were instrumental in determining his attitude

32  Under the Banner of Islam toward the Nestorian Christians whom he was to massacre, thus initiating the chain of events leading to his removal from power. In the 1830s, after the declaration of Tanzimat reforms that gave non-​ Muslims important concessions, American and British Protestant missionaries had become quite active in the Hakkari area. Making use of the splits and struggles in the Assyrian Church, they sought to convert Nestorians to Protestantism. To that aim, they started building churches in Hakkari. Fearing Christian infiltration and the strengthening of the local Christian population, the ruler of Hakkari and the official suzerain of the Nestorians, Mir Nurullah Bey, asked for Bedir Khan’s help, as he himself was militarily quite weak (Eppel 2014). Using this opportunity to increase his power in the region, Bedir Khan conducted two attacks in 1843 and in 1846, and massacred seven to ten thousand Nestorians. Being informed about the massacres by travelers’ accounts and by Western missionaries in Kurdistan, British and French authorities requested that the Ottoman government immediately overthrow Bedir Khan (Bruinessen 1992). The Ottomans accepted this request willingly. They had turned a blind eye to Bedir Khan’s military expansion so as to make use of his power in suppressing the Nestorians, but now that the Christians were suppressed they no longer needed him, and they sent a strong army against him. While Bedir Khan managed to hold his ground for a while, he was not able to withstand the Ottoman army for long. Moreover, his nephew and the commander of the eastern flank of the Kurdish forces, Yazdan Sher, had gone over to the Ottoman side in the middle of the war (Eppel 2014; Galip 2015). Hence, in the summer of 1847, Bedir Khan was forced to surrender. As a reward for his betrayal against Bedir Khan, Yazdan Sher was made governor of Hakkari. In 1855, during the Crimean war between the Russian and Ottoman Empires, he conducted a revolt against the latter, but was suppressed and imprisoned. The revolt of Bedir Khan exemplifies quite well the pragmatism with which the Ottoman government approached Islam and Muslim identity in its relationship with the Kurds. Disturbed by the Christian missionary activity in the Kurdish region, the Ottomans took no active steps to suppress the Christians; rather, they let Bedir Khan, whose religious fanaticism they were fully aware of, do the job for them. However, when Bedir Khan revolted against the Ottoman government the Porte went ahead and suppressed his revolt. The Ottoman government used the same strategy in dealing with the last Kurdish revolt of the nineteenth century, led by Sheikh Ubeydullah

“Green Kemalism”  33 Nehri, a prominent Naqshbandi sheikh and a member of the much-​revered Shamdinan family. Ubeydullah’s revolt took place in 1880, during the reign of Abdulhamid II. Embracing a pan-​Islamic approach and foregrounding his title as “the Caliph of the Muslim world,” Abdulhamid made full use of Islam in incorporating Kurdish leaders into the system. In order to use them against the Russians and the Qajars, Abdulhamid sent them gifts and endowed them with honors and titles to land (Kendal 1993). In line with this policy, during the Russian-​Ottoman war of 1877–​1878, he appointed Ubeydullah as the commander of Kurdish tribal forces (McDowall 2004; Jwaideh 2006). This appointment contributed to the Sheikh’s emergence as a Kurdish-​Islamic leader. According to Samuel Graham Wilson, who was on a missionary trip in Persia at the time, “next to the Sultan and the Sharif of Mecca, Ubeydullah was the holiest person among the Sunnis of Kurdistan” (cited in Jwaideh 2006: 77). He positioned himself as a loyal soldier of the Caliph and declared jihad against not only Russians but also Armenians, who posed a serious threat to Kurdish interests. However, following the Ottoman defeat in the war, the relationship between Ubeydullah and the Porte deteriorated. In 1878, the Ottoman government signed the Treaty of Berlin, Article 61 of which guaranteed that the Ottomans would undertake all necessary steps to protect Armenians (and Nestorians) against Circassians and Kurds (Özoğlu 2004:  74). This greatly disturbed Ubeydullah, who formed the Kurdish Tribal League in order to negotiate with the British about the possible outcomes of their support for Armenians and Nestorians (White 2000: 59). In a letter to Mr. Cochran, an American missionary in the Hakkari region, Ubeydullah expressed his discontent as follows: The Kurdish nation, consisting of more than 500,000 families, is a people apart. Their religion is different [from that of others], and their laws and customs distinct. [ . . . ] We want our affairs to be in our hands, so that in the punishment of our own offenders we may be strong and independent, and have privileges like other nations. This is our object. Otherwise the whole of Kurdistan will take the matter into their own hands, as they are unable to put up with these continual evil deeds, and the oppression, which they suffer at the hands of the [Persian and Ottoman] governments. (cited in Özoğlu 2004: 75)3 3 Sources disagree on the addressee of this letter. Özoğlu (2004) claims that the letter, “dated 5 October 1880,” was sent from “Ubeydullah to Dr. Cochran” and cites as his main source Parliamentary

34  Under the Banner of Islam Take matters in their own hands the Kurds did. In 1879, they revolted against the Ottoman government. When the Ottomans suppressed the revolt, Ubeydullah distanced himself from the rebels and declared continuing allegiance to the Porte. However, the following year, in 1870, he attacked the Persian government in the hopes of consolidating his power in Persian Kurdistan so as to attack the Ottomans with a stronger army (White 2000; Olson 1989). Defeated heavily by the Persians, he was captured by the Ottomans on his way back to Ottoman Kurdistan and was exiled to Hijaz. While many sources (Olson 1989; Jwaideh 2006)  consider Sheikh Ubeydullah’s revolt to be the first clear manifestation of Kurdish nationalism and the will to create an independent Kurdistan that would encompass the borders of both the Ottoman and Persian Empires, others disagree (Özoğlu 2004; McDowall 2004) and argue that it was nothing more than a trans-​tribal uprising. Sources all agree, however, as to the important role religion played in the uprising since Ubeydullah’s success among the otherwise divided Kurdish tribes resulted from his religious appeal. What sets Ubeydullah’s revolt apart from preceding revolts is exactly this fusion of religion and nationalism, where Islam became a marker of ethno-​national identity (Soleimani 2016). In this, it marks the transition, in Kurdish history, from a period of quasi-​secular revolts led by Emirs to a period of religiously denoted revolts led by Sheikhs (Atmaca 2017). As such, it necessitates a short narrative about the role of Sufi orders in Ottoman Kurdistan, especially the Naqshbandiyya-​ Mujaddidiya-​Khalidiyya (a suborder of Naqshbandiyya), which had more followers in Kurmancî-​speaking northern Kurdistan, and the Qadiriyya, which was more prominent in Sorani-​speaking southern Kurdistan and was represented mainly by the influential Barzinji and Talabani families (see Bruinessen 1992, 2000; Weismann 2007). After the Porte crushed the Kurdish emirs, Naqshbandi and Qadiri sheikhs replaced them as important political and religious figures. Although the Qadiriyya has a longer history in the region, the Naqshbandiyya-​ Mujaddidiya-​Khalidiyya expanded rapidly in the first half of the nineteenth century, at the expense of the Qadiriyya (Bruinessen 2000). Founded by Ahmad al-​ Faruqhi al-​ Sirhindi in India in the seventeenth century, the Mujaddidiyya branch of Naqshbandiyya called for the restoration of Papers (Turkey 1881), 5: 47–​48. On the other hand, White (2000: 59), citing Olson (1989: 2), suggests that the letter was addressed to the British vice-​consul in Başkale. McDowall (2004: 53) and Galip (2015: 50) both claim that the letter was addressed to William Abbott, the British consul-​general in Tabriz.

“Green Kemalism”  35 the basic tenets of Islam in their original purity under the leadership of a mujaddid (renovator). It made its way to Ottoman Kurdistan through the teachings of Khalid al-​Baghdadi, founder of the Khalidi branch,4 in the nineteenth century and was spread in northern Kurdistan by Sheikh Ubaydullah’s father, Mawlana Khalid Seyyid Taha-​i Hakkari (known also as Nehri or Shamdinani) (see Atmaca 2017 for more details). Naqshbandi sheikhs led almost all of the several small-​and large-​scale Kurdish rebellions that took place after the uprising of Ubeydullah. Sheikh Said, the leader of the large-​ scale Kurdish uprising in 1925 (which I focus on later in this chapter) was also a member of the Naqshbandi-​Khalidi order. Similarly, Ubeydullah’s son, Sayyid Abd al Qadir, played an active role in the formation of the Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti (Society for the Rise of Kurdistan) in 1918. “The period 1880–​1925 thus [stood] out as one of unusual political activism by Kurdish Naqshbandi shaykhs” (Bruinessen 1986: 5). The political and religious appeal of Naqshbandi sheikhs among Kurds was the biggest reason behind the 1925 ban on Sufi orders and closure of Sufi lodges (tekke) (more on this in Chapter 4), which were seen as “major centers for promulgation of Kurdish nationalism” (Parlar 2005: 554). This political and religious appeal was double-​edged. In Ubeydullah’s case, it not only provided the Sheikh with an esteemed status among the scattered Kurdish tribes, but also ensured his status as a powerful Sunni Muslim leader who could protect the Porte’s interests against both the non-​Muslim Armenians and Nestorians and the Shi‘a Qajars. That is why the Ottoman government was quite reluctant to punish the Sheikh after the initial revolt of 1879. It required significant pressure from the British and French authorities for the Ottomans to arrest the Sheikh after his attack on the Persians in 1880. Since Abdulhamid II was a fervent advocate of Pan (Sunni) Islamism, rather than introducing the reforms the West asked of him to quell the Christian discontent, he chose to collaborate with Sunni Kurdish sheikhs. “Shaykh Ubayd Allah, with his immense spiritual stature in eastern Anatolia, was too 4 Unlike some quietist Sufi orders, the Khalidi are very much involved in politics (Bruinessen 1992; Soleimani 2016) and are characterized by a strong rejection of foreign rule (and Westernization in the Ottoman Empire). In contrast to other Sufi orders that trace their lineage to Prophet Muhammad via his son-​in-​law Ali, the Khalidi (and other Naqshbandi orders) trace their lineage through the first Sunni caliph Abu Bakr; hence the order’s allegiance to orthodox Sunni tradition and its adherence to shari‘a (with mysticism only second in importance). To this day, the Khalidi have maintained their importance not only in Kurdish-​dominant eastern and southeastern Anatolia, but also in the rest of Turkey (for the role played by its members in modern Turkish politics see Algar 1996; Mardin 1993). Several religious communities in Turkey (e.g., Süleymancılar, Işıkçılar, Menzil, Hazneviler, Nurcular) as well as Islamist political parties have their origins in the Khalidi order (Cornell and Kaya 2015).

36  Under the Banner of Islam valuable a pillar in Islam’s defense to ignore, in spite of his mercurial behavior” (McDowall 2004: 57). This strategy made itself even more apparent when in 1890 Abdulhamid announced the creation of a special Kurdish cavalry force with the name of Hamidiye Light Cavalry Regiments (Hamidiye Süvari Alayları). Composed almost entirely of Kurdish horsemen, except for the ranks above colonel, which were to be filled by Turks (White 2000: 60), the regiments were originally set up in Erzurum, Bitlis, and Van, areas where the Kurds had not rebelled against the Porte and where there were uprisings by the Armenians, whose independence movement was in full swing (Kendal 1993: 25). Formed predominantly out of Kurmancî-​speaking Sunni Kurdish tribes (which in turn exacerbated inter-​tribal hostilities, as Alevi Kurdish tribes were usually left out), the regiments were trained by officers of the regular army for a specific period of time. At the end of the training period, they were supposed to hand in their arms. In wartime, these regiments of irregulars were to respond immediately to the Sultan’s call. They received payment only when they were on active duty, but their families were exempt from most taxes (Bruinessen 1992). They went into battle for the first time during the suppression of the Armenian uprising of 1894–​1896, which resulted in a massacre in which tens of thousands of Armenians were killed (Kendal 1993). Later they took part in suppressing Arab nationalists as well as the uprisings by Zazaki-​speaking Alevis. While they numbered about 47,000 men in the mid-​1890s, their number had increased to 53,000 by 1910 (White 2000: 61). With the creation of the Hamidiye regiments, Abdulhamid managed to kill two birds with one stone: First, he co-​opted the rebellious Kurdish chieftains by endowing them with political and military titles. Second, by portraying the Armenians as the “common enemy of Sunni Muslim Kurds and Turks,” he skillfully made use of the Kurds’ religious sentiments to suppress the Armenian revolts. As such, he made sure that Kurds would stay loyal to the Sultan-​Caliph and rally to his pan-​Islamic appeals whenever their help was needed (Bruinessen 1992). In this sense, the Hamidiye regiments served the purpose of containing both Kurdish and Armenian nationalisms, while foregrounding Islam as an important identity marker. As Hamit Bozarslan puts it, “the ideal of Islamic fraternity and the fear of the establishment of an Armenian state” (2003: 165) prevented Kurdish nationalism from exerting real influence. This did not necessarily stop the development of Kurdish nationalism, though, as Kurdish leaders continued to form nationalist organizations like the Kürt Teavün ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Kurdish Society for

“Green Kemalism”  37 Mutual Aid and Progress), established in 1908 and succeeded, in 1912, by the Kurdish students’ union Hêvî (Hope); and the Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti (Society for the Rise of Kurdistan), founded in İstanbul in 1918. The latter was home to the main actors behind the last important Kurdish uprising of the Ottoman period, the 1921 Koçgiri Rebellion, which was initiated in the region from Sivas to Erzincan by Kurmancî-​speaking Alevi tribes. Just like the preceding and following Kurdish uprisings, it was repressed brutally (see Olson 1989 for more information).

Kurds in the Early Republican Period:  Kurdish-​Islamic Synthesis? When in 1923 the Turkish Republic was founded, Kurds made up almost 20% of the population. A considerable minority were Alevis, but the majority were Sunni Muslims; some spoke Zazaki, but the majority were Kurmancî speakers (Bozarslan 2008). Kurdish-​inhabited lands composed almost 30% of the country’s total landmass at the time (Natali 2005). Hence, no matter how nationalist the founding cadres of the Republic were, and no matter how Turkish a state they envisioned, they could not afford to lose the Kurdish provinces. Having already lost the Balkans and the Arab provinces, they took every necessary step to quell Kurdish rebellions and keep the strategically located Kurdistan province in the newly founded Republic. To that end, the leader of the Turkish independence movement, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and his friends resorted to the Hamidian method of issuing a call to arms in the name of Islam, which had been successful in subduing Kurdish nationalism at the turn of the century. Even though this project seemed to clash with the secular nature of the Turkish nation-​state they were to build, it was quite useful considering the fact that “the Ottoman Empire lacked an ethnic core” and “the categories of Muslim and non-​ Muslims, which constituted the dominant status groups, transcended ethnicity” (Heper 2007: 23). Although the leaders of the young Turkish Republic rejected the legacy of the Ottoman Empire on many grounds, they did not hesitate to continue with the Muslim/​non-​Muslim binary as a strategic tool to help their cause (see Chapter 4). For example, in the Lausanne Peace Treaty, signed on June 24, 1923, between the Turkish Republic on one side and the Allied Powers on the other, refusing the latter’s proposal to bring all ethnic, religious, and linguistic

38  Under the Banner of Islam minorities in Turkey under international protection, the Turkish delegation recognized only non-​Muslims as constituting a minority (Oran 2007), hence depriving the Kurds (as well as Laz, Arabs, and Circassians) of the rights it was to provide to non-​Muslim minorities. Upon hearing the British delegation’s suggestion that the Kurds should be treated as minorities, İsmet İnönü, the head of the Turkish delegation, responded that “the Kurds were no different from the Turks” (Heper 2007: 124). In line with this understanding, and quite pragmatically, the Turkish delegation insisted on presenting the Kurds as one of the “founding elements (kurucu unsur) of Turkey” that needed no special protection as a minority group (Meray 1970). Similarly, during the Turkish War of Independence, Mustafa Kemal emphasized religion as the tie that binds Sunni Kurds and Turks: “[A]‌s a co-​ religionist I pray you must not heed the strife stirred amongst us and which has separated us. . . . [W]e want to save the country and Islamism from the hands of the enemies who think that our country is a digestible mouthful” he said (Şimşir 1973: 215; cited in Natali 2005: 71). Although the majority of Sunni Kurds were (and still are) followers of the Shafi school of thought, in contrast to the mainly Hanafi Sunni Turks, Kemalists opted to overlook this distinction. In his first speech in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi/​TBMM), opened on April 23, 1920, Kemal determined the main aim of the Anatolian resistance movement as “taking measures to save the Caliphate and the Sultanate from the pressures of foreign powers” (Eraslan 2001:  3).5 When in 1922 the TBMM abolished the Ottoman Sultanate, Kemal assured the members of the TBMM that “the institution of the Caliphate will be exalted as the central link of the spirit, the conscience and the faith of the Islamic world . . .” (cited in Mango 1999: 364). To increase the plausibility of his statements, he made sure that almost half of the delegates at the Erzurum and Sivas Congresses, held in 1919, were madrasa-​affiliated (Natali 2005). As a result of these pragmatic moves, “many local Kurdish tribal leaders, seeing the Kemalists as soldiers of Islam, supported the Anatolian resistance movement” (Özoğlu 2004: 3). However, this rapprochement between the Kemalists and the Kurds was short-​lived. On March 3, 1924, the TBMM passed a law declaring the Caliph deposed and the office abolished. The same law also abolished the office of Sheikh al-​Islam (Şeyhülislam), the highest religious authority in the Ottoman 5 Note however, that, the purpose of the TBMM was reformulated in the second article of the government program of September 13, 1920, as “being the delivery of Turkish people from the oppression of capitalism and imperialism” (Karpat 1970: 531).

“Green Kemalism”  39 Empire, and established, in its place, the Diyanet, which, to this day, oversees all Islamic matters in the country. Shortly after, on April 8, 1924, the shari‘a courts were abolished, their judges were forced to retire, and their jurisdiction was transferred to the secular courts. The mecelle and the shari‘a were replaced by new secular codes of civil law, criminal law, and commercial law based on the corresponding Swiss, Italian, and German codes (Shaw and Shaw 1977: 385). That same year also witnessed the closure of the madrasas by the promulgation of the Law for the Unification of Education. This law not only served to close 479 madrasas and Qur’anic schools, but also established nationwide compulsory schools with a curriculum devoid of religious instruction (Kaplan 1999: 159). Mustafa Kemal is reported to have declared: “The madrasas, established by the old Turks, are degenerated ruins, unable to be reformed in the light of a modern academic mentality” (Coşkun 1996:  9; quoted in Hefner and Zaman 2007: 150). On November 30, 1925, the TBMM passed a law “closing all the dervish lodges (tekke) and cells (zaviye) as well as religious tombs (türbe), abolished religious titles and their use, and prohibited the wearing of clerical garb in public except under special circumstances such as funerals” (Shaw and Shaw 1977: 385). These secularist reforms came as a shock to many who thought they had fought with the Allied powers to save the Caliphate. Kurdish leaders were no exception. Feeling betrayed and angered by the reforms the new regime undertook, they initiated numerous rebellions between 1925 and 1937. Even though “the ostensible objective of the Kurdish rebellions between 1925–​1937 was to bring back the Islamic character of the state” (Sakallıoğlu 1998: 79) most historians concur that these rebellions aimed at holding on to traditional Kurdish identity irrespective of its religious or ethnic aspect (Bruinessen 1984; Çevik 2012). In order to further elucidate the mixed nature of these rebellions and demonstrate how religion and ethnicity went hand in hand, I will focus on three of these rebellions, The Sheikh Said Rebellion of 1925, The Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı) Rebellion of 1927–​1930, and the Dersim Rebellion of 1937–​1938.

The Sheikh Said Rebellion (1925) The Sheikh Said rebellion, which took place in February 1925 and culminated in Said’s execution in June 1925, was the first large-​scale Kurdish rebellion and arguably the biggest internal challenge to the newly founded Republic.

40  Under the Banner of Islam Some scholars categorize the rebellion as an Islamic reactionary movement (Kalafat 1992; Mumcu 1992) that aimed to restore the shari‘a (Özoğlu 2004). Some others think that the rebellion was more nationalist in nature (Olson 1989; Tuncay 1981) and that its main objective was the foundation of an autonomous or independent Kurdistan. According to Bruinessen, the rebellion was “neither a purely religious, nor a purely nationalist one. . . . The primary aim of both Sheikh Said and the Azadi leaders was the establishment of an independent Kurdistan. The motivation of the rank and file was mixed, but for them the religious factor may have predominated” (1992: 298). Sakallıoğlu shares the same view and argues that it “was basically an ethnic Kurdish rebellion with religious overtones” (1996: 235). Endorsing this claim is British observer Toynbee’s account that “the revolt did not spread among the Turkish population of Erzurum, Trebizond and Samsun, who were almost as backward and as reactionary as their Kurdish neighbors and who not long afterwards . . . rose on their own account . . . against the Ankara government’s Westernizing reforms” (quoted in Bruinessen 1992: 293). Sheikh Said, a Naqshbandi sheikh from Bingöl, was at the forefront of the rebellion. Yet, it was organized by a much broader coalition, led by the Kurdish nationalist organization Azadî (Freedom), established in 1923 in Erzurum by Kurdish leaders of military background. The decision to carry out a general uprising in Kurdistan was taken at the 1924 congress of Azadî (Bruinessen 1992: 280). Because the newly founded Turkish Republic was at the time carrying out several secularizing reforms and because religion was still the most important link connecting diverse Kurdish tribes, Azadî leaders judged that a religious rebellion with nationalist undertones had a higher chance of succeeding than a purely nationalist uprising. Plus, the secularist character of the new government had caused considerable disturbance among not only Kurds but also Turks. Hence, by cloaking the uprising with a religious garb, Azadî was hoping to make use of this internal divide among the Turks. After an unripe and unplanned mutiny by some of the Azadî leaders in August 1924, the government became aware of the planned uprising and arrested several of the movement’s leaders. Following this, Sheikh Said emerged as the leader of the uprising and convinced otherwise divided tribes to take part in it. Because sheikhs in Ottoman Kurdistan were not only revered as spiritual leaders but also as mediators and conflict-​solvers, Sheikh Said’s appeal managed to transcend tribal boundaries (except that of Alevi tribes who did not feel compelled to follow a Sunni sheikh). After

“Green Kemalism”  41 the breakout of the rebellion in February 1925, the state responded quite harshly: Martial law was declared in Kurdish provinces and at least 35.000 Turkish troops were sent to the region to quell the uprising (Bruinessen 1992). After several months of active combat, regime forces managed to recapture several towns that had been captured by Said’s militia. Said himself was caught in April and was hung, along with 47 other Kurdish leaders, on June 29, 1925. The remaining tribal leaders and guerrillas had to seek refuge in the mountains, and stayed there until the central government declared a general amnesty in 1928. While most of the rebels surrendered after the proclamation of the amnesty, some went to Mount Ararat where a follow-​up rebellion took place.

The Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı) Rebellion (1929–​1930) If the mastermind behind the Sheikh Said Rebellion was Azadî, the one behind the Mount Ararat Rebellion was Xoybûn,6 a Kurdish nationalist organization founded at a conference held by Kurdish parties and political organizations in Bhamdun, Lebanon, in 1927 (Chatty 2010: 262). Like Azadî, Xoybûn aimed to establish an independent Kurdish state. Appealing directly to the Kurdish nation, it “questioned how Kurds could exist under the yoke of the Turk, when other nations have gained their independence” (White 2000: 76). However, unlike Azadî, Xoybûn did not need to resort to the use of religion as a tool to mobilize the Kurds, as it was already successful in uniting diverse sections of the Kurdish population, ranging from intellectuals to aghas, sheiks, and beys. Xoybûn also had a broader influence than Azadî in the Kurdish regions of Turkey (White 2000). Made up of a military branch, led by veteran Kurdish officer General İhsan Nuri Pasha, and a political branch, led by Kurdish intellectuals like Süreyya and Celadet Bedirxan, Xoybûn attempted to “create a strong Kurdish national liberation front with a trained fighting force that would not depend on the traditional tribal leaders” (Galip 2015: 56). It had branches in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, and Iran, and it did not have difficulty in mobilizing Kurds all over the region. The uprising began in 1929 when Kurdish forces took control of an area stretching from Mount Ararat to the northern parts of Van and Bitlis (Chatty 6 Sources disagree as to the meaning of Xoybûn. While some translate it as “to be one’s self/​selfhood,” others connect it to the Kurmancî word serxwebûn and claim that it means “independence.”

42  Under the Banner of Islam 2010: 262). This region, inhabited by the Jelali tribe, was specifically chosen by the Xoybûn leaders as it was “the only area that was then not under complete control of the Turkish government” (Bruinessen 1992: 291). Plus, it was conveniently close to Iran, which had agreed to help the Kurds in their fight against the Turkish government. The initial reaction of the Turkish government to the uprising was to seek reconciliation through offering amnesty for Kurdish prisoners—​mostly Kurdish nationalists—​and halting the program of deportations (White 2000: 78). However, the Kurds, not willing to forgo their national aspirations, rejected the Turkish government’s negotiation offers. After various failed attempts at establishing negotiations, the Turkish armed forces finally attacked the Kurds on June 11, 1930 (Jwaideh 2006). Xoybûn appealed for help from Kurds all over the region. In one month, Kurds took 1,700 Turkish prisoners and shot down 12 Turkish aircraft (Chatty 2010: 262). However, the Turkish military was superior in numbers. Plus, the Turkish government had managed to come to an agreement with Iran, convincing the Shah to put an end to his logistical support to the Kurds. As a result, by the end of the summer of 1930 the rebellion was suppressed. Following the rebellion, the Turkish government took draconian measures including deportations, displacements, and mass arrests, as well as the burning of villages and executions (Chatty 2010; White 2000). A law promulgated in 1932 ordered the deportation and dispersion of Kurds throughout Anatolia, while Kurdish areas were to be repopulated by Turkish immigrants (Chatty 2010; Jwaideh 2006). Tribes were declared to be devoid of any legal standing and their property was confiscated. Another law of resettlement, passed in 1934, divided the country into three zones (Aslan 2014: 49). The first zone was allocated to those who were ethnically Turkish. The second zone was allocated to those whose “Turkishness” needed to be enhanced; Kurds, along with other non-​Turkish immigrants, were to be settled in this zone so as to be assimilated into the Turkish culture. The third zone covered the areas where Kurdish rebellions had taken place in eastern Anatolia and declared these areas closed to settlement for security reasons. As a result of this law, 25,831 Kurds were moved to the west (Çağaptay 2006: 90). Despite these measures, another influential Kurdish uprising took place in 1937. This time, the rebels were not the Kurmancî-​speaking Sunni Kurdish majority but the predominantly Zazaki-​ and Kurmancî-​speaking, mainly Alevi inhabitants of Dersim.

“Green Kemalism”  43

Dersim Rebellion (1937–​1938) An inaccessible mountainous region in eastern Anatolia, home to predominantly Zazaki-​ and Kurmancî-​speaking Alevis and a small group of Sunnis (e.g., Savaks),7 Dersim was characterized by cultural distinctiveness, dispersed population, and a difficult terrain, and had long been known for its defiance of the state (Aslan 2014: 50). Starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, the Ottomans tried to achieve control in the region through several operations but failed to do so. The inhabitants of Dersim had not participated in any of the previous Kurdish rebellions (except for the Koçgiri rebellion), as their local identity8—​predominantly Zazaki-​ and Kurmancî-​ speaking Alevis, in contrast to mainly Kurmancî-​speaking Sunnis—​was stronger than their “Kurdish” identity. Nor did its people join the Hamidiye regiments, take part in World War I or in the Turkish War of Independence. As such, it had strong regional autonomy (Chatty 2010: 263). In January 1937, in response to a law passed by the Turkish government to enforce assimilation in the region, the inhabitants of Dersim wrote a letter of protest declaring their opposition to the new law. When the Turkish government arrested the emissaries carrying the letter, the people of Dersim, in retaliation, attacked a convoy of police cars and kidnapped the policemen (Jwaideh 2006:  215). This marked the beginning of the rebellion. Despite massive artillery bombardments and the use of poison gas, the Turkish army had still not been able to make tangible gains by the end of the summer of 1937. As a result, “by the middle of 1938 the government sent in three army corps and most of its air force to batter the region,” and after a large-​scale massacre9 it finally declared victory in October 1938 (Chatty 2010: 263). The rebellion lasted almost two years and was suppressed so violently that it had devastating results for the inhabitants of Dersim. While the exact number of those killed during the whole period is contested (White 2000: 83 puts the total number at 40,000), according to an official report around 7,000 Kurds were killed only between April and December 1938, and thousands 7 I would like to thank historians Zeynep Türkyılmaz and Yektan Türkyılmaz for their invaluable input on the demographics of Dersim and the surrounding area. 8 According to Özlem Göner (2017), the older generation in Dersim who witnessed state violence consider themselves Kırmanc and differentiate themselves from Sunni Kurds, Sunni Turks, and Turkish Alevis. 9 See Zeynep Türkyılmaz’s piece on the diary of a Turkish soldier who took part in the massacre:  “Dersim Soykırımı ve Kötülüğün Sıradanlığı” (Dersim Genocide and the Banality of Evil), Agos, November 29, 2019, http://​www.agos.com.tr/​tr/​yazi/​23286/​dersim-​soykirimi-​ve-​kotulugun-​ siradanligi (retrieved January 3, 2020).

44  Under the Banner of Islam of them were deported to western Turkey in the aftermath of the uprising (Bruinessen 1994). As in the Sheikh Said rebellion, Dersim rebellion was also led by a religious chieftain, 82-​year-​old Seyyid Riza of Dersim. Once the rebellion was over, he and his closest associates were tried and hanged by the Turkish state. The Turks, during and after the rebellion, continued to blame it on “the religious and reactionary” parties among the inhabitants of Dersim. Although religion played an important role in both rebellions, Bruinessen (2000) suggests that, contrary to the Sunni tribes of the Sheikh Said rebellion, predominantly Alevi tribes of Dersim felt much closer to Alevi Turks than to Sunni Kurds. As such, sectarian divisions stood in the way of a unified Kurdish national identity. However, White (2000) tells a different story; she claims that out of fear of total extermination at the hands of the Turkish state and in an attempt to be recognized by the international community, the people of Dersim were ready to ignore their differences with the Sunni Kurds and regard themselves as part of the “Kurdish nation” (2000: 81). No matter which account is true, the mixed nature of the rebellion was obvious; just as in the Sheikh Said rebellion, religion, ethnicity, and nationalism went hand in hand during the Dersim rebellion. The heavy-​handed suppression of the Sheikh Said, Ağrı, and Dersim uprisings and the mass killings, deportation, and forced migration of thousands of Kurds greatly intimidated the Kurdish population. They went into a period of silence and stayed dormant until the transformation to the multiparty system in 1946 and the ensuing Democrat Party regime in 1950.

The Secularization of the Kurdish Movement: 1950–​1978 While early Kurdish rebellions were all marked by a dominant religious discourse alongside a nationalistic one, the period between 1950 and 1980 was to witness the secularization of the Kurdish movement and the dwindling influence of religion on Kurdish nationalist leaders (but not among the Kurdish population). This transformation did not happen overnight; it took quite a long time for the Kurdish movement to break its ties with the Kurdish-​Islamic uprisings of the past and morph into a secular Marxist independence movement. After a 23-​ year single-​ party rule by the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi/CHP), Turkey transitioned to a multiparty

“Green Kemalism”  45 democracy in 1946. In the elections held in 1950, the CHP was ousted, for the first time, by the Democrat Party (DP), which received 55.2% of the votes. This election victory marked the beginning of a 10-​year-​long DP rule, during which two important changes affecting the Kurdish question were introduced: First, the DP, in contrast to the strict secularism of the CHP, embraced a warmer attitude toward religion and foregrounded Islam in its election campaigns. Immediately after its election, the DP changed the penal code so as to allow the muezzins to chant the call to prayer in Arabic, reinstituted religious education classes in public schools, permitted religious radio broadcasts, and started the construction of several new mosques. Bringing Islam back to the center of national identity was a populist move on the side of the DP and it indeed served its purpose. Impressed by the DP’s emphasis on religion, the Naqshbandi and Qadiri sheikhs in Kurdish towns asked their followers to support and vote for the DP in elections (McDowall 2004: 400). This gave the Kurdish sheikhs, who were suppressed by the Kemalist regime, the opportunity to re-​emerge as public actors with great influence on their followers. The second change the DP introduced was a turn toward economic liberalism, in contrast to the etatism of the CHP. At the heart of the DP’s election campaign lay an emphasis on private property, especially on large estates, which served well the feudal Kurdish landowners who long feared the CHP’s proposed “land reform” aiming to reallocate land so as to give small farmers some arable land. As such, the DP managed to get the support of not only the sheikhs but also the land-​owning aghas. In return for an end to their long-​ term silence as public figures, the aghas maintained a stable constituency for the DP (Toprak 1981). All in all, the DP’s policies helped revive the Kurdish region, and served to make influential Kurdish actors publicly visible again. However, what really triggered the establishment of a suitable base for the construction of a secular Kurdish nationalism, free from the influence of aghas and sheikhs, was the mechanization of agriculture, which, under the DP government, took on an unprecedented character (McDowall 2004). Because of the introduction of tractors, many peasants lost their jobs and were forced to migrate to bigger cities (Kurdish cities as well as western cities like İstanbul). In the long run, this led to the formation of Kurdish clusters in big cities and the formation of a “Kurdish” identity among the Kurdish immigrants, who, upon contact with the Turks, felt the need to underline their identity as “Kurds” even if they had never prioritized it before. As such, by the time the Turkish military ended the DP rule with a coup d’état in 1960, there was already a glimmer of nationalist awakening among the Kurds.

46  Under the Banner of Islam This glimmer was to evolve into a bigger fire in the 1960s—​the decade when the Kurdish movement started to become more secular. “With the spread of universal education and the socio-​political liberalization as a result of the 1961 constitution, new modern intellectuals rather than tribal and religious leaders started to shape Kurdish identity” (Yavuz 2001: 9). Ironically, these intellectuals were the products of a “Turkification” campaign led by the Turkish state. In 1940s, the First Inspectorate General (stationed in most Kurdish cities) handpicked several bright Kurdish children to be sent to İstanbul with the aim of “turning them into better Turkish citizens.” These children, among whom were Musa Anter, Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Yusuf Azizoğlu, and Faik Bucak, were lodged in a special hostel for “students from the east” (McDowall 2004). They inevitably came into contact with each other, hence laying the ground for the establishment of a Kurdish intellectual group. This group, later dubbed as the “Eastists” (Doğucular), played an important role in advancing Kurdish nationalism in the 1960s. These intellectuals framed Kurdish nationalism under the rubric of “regional inequality” and presented infrastructural developments in eastern provinces as the solution to what came to be known as the “Eastern Problem” (Doğu Sorunu) (Özcan 2006). In 1958 Musa Anter and his friends started publishing İleri Yurt, the first publication to publicly talk about the problems of Kurds since the Dersim massacre in 1938. However, in 1959, following the massacre of Turkmens by Kurds in Kerkuk, Iraq, Anter and 48 other leading Kurdish intellectuals were arrested and İleri Yurt was closed down. The arrest of the “forty-​niners” (49’lar) raised national awareness among literate Kurds. In the wake of this increased tension, in May 1960, the Turkish military carried out a coup d’état and formed the National Unity Committee (NUC) to rule the country. With Law No. 1587 the NUC started systematically changing Kurdish place names into Turkish. President Cemal Gürsel, in a foreword10 he wrote to the second edition of Şerif Fırat’s Doğu İlleri ve Varto Tarihi (Eastern Cities and the History of Varto), declared that there is no Kurdish nation, and that Kurds and Turks are consanguine (soydaş) (McDowall 2004). Yet, following the 1960 coup, a liberal constitution was drafted and put into practice in 1961. The constitution promised more liberties for all groups, including Kurds. Although it helped Kurdish national identity flourish, this 10 The whole text (in Turkish) can be accessed at: http://​doguillerivevartotarihi.blogspot.nl/​2015/​ 04/​dogu-​illeri-​ve-​varto-​tarihi-​mserif-​frat.html

“Green Kemalism”  47 period of liberties also had its limits as far as the Kurds were concerned. For example, in İstanbul, Musa Anter and his friends started publishing the bilingual journal Dicle-​Fırat in 1962. After eight issues the journal was banned in 1963 (Jongerden 2007:  58). Other journals, with similarly brief lives, shared the same fate. By the end of 1963 the editors and contributors of most journals focusing on the “Eastern Problem” were arrested and charged with “separatism and communism” (McDowall 2004). Still, these journals managed to offer alternative historiographies to both Turkish nationalism and earlier versions of Kurdish nationalism (Bozarslan 2003). In the midst of all of these developments, the Workers’ Party of Turkey (Türkiye İşçi Partisi/TİP), established in 1961, “provided a young generation of Kurdish politicians and activists with material resources, access, and allies, all of which were important for [ . . . ] articulating new Kurdish national demands in the public realm” (Watts 2010: 38). TİP called for a socialist revolution that would put an end to the feudal system in Turkey’s eastern cities and to the exploitation of Turkish workers by western capitalists. In the elections held in 1965, it managed to get 3.3% of the national vote and sent 15 deputies to the parliament, among which were four members from Kurdish-​majority cities of Kars, Malatya, Urfa, and Diyarbakır. In 1967, the party played an important role in organizing Eastern Meetings (Doğu Mitingleri), spearheaded by TİP’s regional offices in southeastern Anatolia (Burkay 2002). The main demands in these meetings were increased attention to the region’s economic development and increased state investment to achieve parity with western provinces (Beşikçi 1992). These meetings displayed quite well that aghas and sheiks were no longer the main actors voicing Kurdish concerns. Slowly but surely, they were being replaced by a new generation of Kurdish bourgeois intellectuals—​mostly educated, young, urban professionals and students. The most important impact of TİP on Kurdish politics was its contribution to the reframing of the Kurdish question in Marxist terms. Influenced by the socialist vocabulary of TİP, Kurdish intellectuals started employing a leftist discourse in talking about the Kurds’ problems. This helped transform the “Eastern question,” with an emphasis on underdevelopment, to the “Kurdish question,” with an emphasis on national oppression (Güneş 2012: 65). The newly emerging Kurdish national movement highlighted more the oppression of Kurds than the broader demand of equality voiced by Turkish socialists. This divergence gave way to the radicalization of a younger generation of Kurdish activists, who, in the late 1960s, started voicing calls to “separate”

48  Under the Banner of Islam from the Turkish left and follow an independent route. These calls culminated in the establishment of the Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths (Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları/​DDKO) by a group of Kurdish students in Ankara in 1969 (Watts 2010). In a short period of time, students and activists in other cities, including İstanbul and Diyarbakır, joined the DDKO and opened branches in their cities. The DDKO called for the establishment of educational programs for women and peasants in the east and stood for civil liberties and national awareness in Kurdish-​majority towns and cities. The state responded rather harshly to the DDKO’s efforts for increasing nationalist mobilization among the Kurds. Especially following the autonomy agreement signed between the Baath government in Iraq and the Kurdish forces under Mustafa Barzani in March 1970, the Turkish state, worried about the repercussions of this agreement on Turkey’s Kurdish citizens, increased the amount of violence and repression in the Kurdish region. To “prevent separatist activity and find out the separatists,” Ankara sent professional soldiers to the Kurdish region. Known as “commando operations,” these raids triggered a traumatic period in the region, associated with arbitrary brutality and torture. Against this background, in October 1970, DDKO leaders were arrested and put on trial. Under İsmail Beşikçi’s leadership they prepared “a 150-​page defense of Kurdish identity and rights, [ . . . ] the first major statement of its kind” (McDowall 2004: 412). Several of them ended up receiving heavy sentences, in excess of 10 years. Eventually, in March 1971, the Turkish military carried out another coup and cracked down on all opposition groups. They cited as their excuse “the rise of extreme leftism” as well as “the separatist question in the East.” The coup ironically led to the flourishing of more Kurdish organizations throughout the 1970s (Diken 2007). While the TİP, which was closed during the coup, was re-​established in 1975 and still retained the support of influential Kurdish intellectuals, it no longer was the main political channel for Kurds to voice their concerns. More than 20 Kurdish parties or organizations stemmed from either the TİP or the DDKO (Olson 1996).11 The DDKO was reorganized in 1974 as DDKD (Devrimci Doğu Kültür Dernekleri/​Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Associations). Other legal and illegal Kurdish groups included the Socialist Party of Turkish Kurdistan (TKSP) (which changed its name to Kurdistan Socialist Party in 1992) and 11 See Bruinessen (1984); Samim (1981); and Tezcür (2015) for a detailed account of these organizations.

“Green Kemalism”  49 the Kurdistan National Liberatonists (KUK), which clashed in the late 1970s with the newly formed PKK (Watts 2010). Most importantly, the second half of the 1970s witnessed the ethnification of the Kurdish question. The void left by the socialist Kurdish intellectuals, who were banned or expelled from the political arena, was filled by a new group of Kurdish intellectuals who introduced a discursive framework that presented the “Eastern question” not as a problem of underdevelopment that could be solved by a socialist revolution, but as a problem of ethnicity and nationalism. For example, Şerafettin Elçi, a CHP member and the minister of public works in Bülent Ecevit’s government (from 1978 to 1979), made an important statement about Kurdish identity along these lines. In late 1979, he was quoted as saying that he accepted the existence of different ethnic groups and that if there were no Kurds in Turkey the problem of Kurdism would not be on the agenda (Milliyet, April 18, 1979; quoted in Watts 2010: 44). In response to accusations of separatism, he asked: “What is separatism really? Is someone a separatist if he says ‘I am Kurdish, there are Kurds in Turkey?’ Or, is separatism the desire to found a separate Kurdish state?” (Hürriyet, April 19, 1979; quoted in Watts 2010: 44). Elçi’s explanations were not enough to quell the fear of separatism widespread among the military and political circles at the time. Starting in December 1978, martial law was declared in some Eastern cities and in the spring of 1979, the National Security Council voted to extend martial law to 19 other cities, including Diyarbakır, Tunceli, Mardin, and Hakkari. It is against this background that the seeds of the PKK were sown in Ankara in the first half of the 1970s. Abdullah Öcalan, the founder of the PKK, was a university student in Ankara during the time of the 1971 military coup. In 1972, he was arrested for taking part in a student protest and was sent to Ankara’s Mamak Prison, where he spent seven months. In 1974 he joined Ankara Democratic Higher Education Student Association (Ankara Demokratik Yüksek Öğrenim Derneği/​ADYÖD), a branch of Revolutionary Youth (Devrimci Gençlik/​Dev-​Genç), the most influential left-​wing student organization of the 1960s. After 1971, the Dev-​Genç evolved into the Turkish People’s Liberation Party and Front (Türkiye Halk Kurtuluş Partisi Cephesi/​ THKP-​C), associated with Mahir Çayan and his urban guerrilla warfare struggle, and gave birth to several smaller organizations like Dev-​Yol and Dev-​Sol. ADYÖD was among these smaller organizations. Convinced that Kurds needed an independent organization to fight for their national rights, Öcalan

50  Under the Banner of Islam and his friends thought that ADYÖD could provide them with the necessary environment to rally both Turkish and Kurdish socialists to carry out the revolution that would benefit both Turkish and Kurdish people. However, Öcalan’s ideas did not get much support from the Turkish students in the organization (Marcus 2007). Soon after, ADYÖD was accused of “communist propaganda” and was shut down in 1975. Disappointed by both the Turkish leftists’ unwillingness to become involved in his plans and the closure of ADYÖD, Öcalan decided that a joint effort with Turkish leftists under a legal organization was doomed to failure. Hence, he started working toward the establishment of an illegal armed organization devoted solely to the Kurdish struggle for independence. In 1975, Öcalan and about 15 others decided to form a Marxist Leninist group with the aim of organizing an armed revolutionary Kurdish uprising and establish an independent Kurdish state (Marcus 2007: 28). Following their first meeting in Ankara, at the end of 1974, this small group, known at the time as Apocular (followers of Apo—​the nickname of Abdullah Öcalan), agreed to withdraw from Ankara to Kurdish-​dominated areas. Drawn almost exclusively from Turkey’s growing proletariat (McDowall 2004), Apocular blended Kurdish nationalism with class war. They criticized aghas, merchants, and the ruling establishment, who they thought were exploiting the Kurdish proletariat ruthlessly. According to them, “the enemies of the Kurdish people” included “fascists” (radical Turkish nationalist groups such as Grey Wolves), “agents of the state and their supporters,” the Turkish left, and Kurdish landlords (McDowall 2004: 421). Because they failed to gain the support of other Kurdish organizations (such as Ala Rizgarî, Kawa, and the Kurdistan Conservative Party [KCP]), they continued on their journey alone. In 1978, at a congress in the village of Fis (located in Diyarbakır), attended by 22 delegates, the PKK was officially established (Özcan 2006). For Öcalan, the problem was “Turkey’s colonization of the Kurdish region,” coupled with imperialism and capitalism. The solution to this problem, according to him, lay in socialism and armed struggle. Those who did not approve of this solution were simply “traitors” and “collaborators,” in Öcalan’s words (McDowall 2004; Marcus 2007). While other Kurdish organizations were hesitant about the timing, Öcalan argued for an immediate armed uprising. This insistence on an urgent armed insurgence was what boosted Öcalan’s popularity among Kurdish people, especially the Kurdish youth, who saw “armed struggle” as an alluring method to achieve their goals. However, what really distinguished the PKK from its competitor Kurdish

“Green Kemalism”  51 organizations and earned it the support of the local Kurdish population was its opposition to the landlords and exploitative tribal chiefs (Romano 2006: 74). “Although the PKK was occasionally allied with a patriotic chieftain, tribal or landed elites never gained much influence in it, distinguishing the PKK from most other Kurdish organizations, whose leaderships usually included a few such persons” (Bruinessen 1992: 42). As such, when in 1978 the Apocular started calling themselves the PKK, published a manifesto, and started carrying out attacks, much of their violence was directed not against the state security forces but against local landlords (as well as against their leftist and Kurdish rivals). Most of their attacks between 1978 and 1980 targeted feudal landlords. It was only in mid-​1980s that the PKK started carrying out armed attacks against state security forces (Romano 2006: 77). It staged its first deadliest attack in Çukurca, Hakkari, in 1984, where eight Turkish soldiers were killed. This was followed by other attacks. “By August 1985, almost 200 had died in about 70 armed incidents” (McDowall 2004: 421). The PKK, started by only a handful of university students and ignored by many as a “fringe organization,” was, rather unexpectedly, turning into a mass movement.

Bringing Islam Back In: 1990–​2002 The PKK’s 1978 founding manifesto did not have any reference to or mention of religion. Under the influence of orthodox Marxism, the official discourse of the PKK at the time was hostile to religion. The 1978 manifesto even refrained from referring to the Sheikh Said Rebellion of 1925, most probably because of its religious character. The leading cadres of the PKK opted to stay aloof to the historical legacy of Sheikh Said—​a national hero in the eyes of most Kurdish people—​even though it would have provided a much-​sought political legitimacy for the organization in its early years. It was in 1982, in another foundational document titled “The Role of Force in Kurdistan,” that the PKK, for the first time, made a reference to the Kurdish rebellions of 1920s (cited in Özsoy 2010: 145): Although the resistances were rightful and sacred the reactionary position of the leadership obstructed their transformation into a revolutionary national liberationist struggle. They prioritized economically their narrow family and tribal interests, ideologically the Islamic brotherhood

52  Under the Banner of Islam and the feudal ideology, and politically they aimed to bring back the Ottoman Sultans. That’s why we call these primitive rebellions “rightful but primitive!”

This attitude was to evolve into the recognition of the importance of religion in the early 1990s. In two successive articles published in the official journal of the PKK, Serxwebûn (Independence), in July and August 1989, Öcalan would criticize the “crude materialism that rejects religion all together” and praise Prophet Muhammad as a “revolutionary figure” who “did not fall into the same trap as Judaism and called for equality and internationalism by highlighting that ‘an Arab is no different than a non-​Arab’ ” (Öcalan 1989a: 8). (This quote from Muhammad’s last sermon was also cited by a considerable number of Kurdish imams I interviewed, to argue that Muhammad himself would be against the assimilation policies imposed by the Turkish state on the Kurdish people.) In the same vein, Öcalan portrayed Islam as an all-​encompassing, universalist, revolutionary religion that went wrong in the hands of the Kemalist feudal-​comprador bourgeoisie. [ . . . ] As if the use of Islam by the Ottomans in the most dogmatic and conservative fashion imaginable is not enough, the fascist coup-​makers of September 12 [referring to the 1980 coup d’etat], backed by the deep-​state agents, are making use of Islam in an even more shameless and hypocritical way. [ . . . ] By employing Turkish-​Islamic synthesis they ignore the essence of Islam and in order to repress the awakening of masses they emphasize its backwards and dogmatic aspects only. Especially in Kurdistan they use Islam to endorse their domination, just like the feudal lords who have used religion to endorse their superiority in this region for centuries. (Öcalan 1989b: 11)

By 1995, the PKK was no longer a marginal organization but a mass armed movement. To appear more mainstream and to represent as broad a section of the Kurdish population as possible, it started changing its stance toward Islam (see Sarıgil 2018 for a detailed account of the changing relationship between the PKK and Islam). More importantly, the early 1990s also witnessed the foundation of a militant Kurdish-​Islamist organization, Hizbullah,12 12 The Kurdish Hizbullah, a secretive, illegal organization not connected to the Lebanese Hizbullah, was engaged in armed conflict with the PKK throughout the 1990s. In 2000, the state started cracking down on Hizbullah. The leader of the organization, Hüseyin Velioğlu, was killed in a police raid in

“Green Kemalism”  53 which killed many secular, leftist Kurdish activists throughout the 1990s. Many believed that the state ignored the Kurdish Hizbullah to counterbalance the impact of the PKK in the region, as part of a broader “divide and rule” policy (Çakır 2011). In accordance with this belief, Öcalan, in 1995, criticized the Kurdish Hizbullah and “declared PKK to be the real fighter for Islam understood as a religion of justice against all kinds of oppression” (Özsoy 2010: 148). While Öcalan was becoming more friendly toward Islam, the leader cadres of the Kurdish movement as a whole still seemed very much in favor of a secular, leftist, Marxist ideology. The Kurdish politicians in the parliament were, throughout the 1990s, secular, leftist figures. Although this started to change in the early 2000s and more pious Kurds, like Altan Tan, started serving as deputies of Kurdish parties, the image of Kurdish politicians as “non-​ believers” is still very prevalent, not only among the Turks but even among Kurds themselves. As such, pious Kurds feel torn between two allegiances. As an old Kurdish man told me in Diyarbakir: “We want to vote for the AKP because of our religion and we want to vote for the BDP because of our language. In the end, we just can’t decide whom to vote for.” Among all these discussions, in 1999, Öcalan was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. Following Öcalan’s arrest, the PKK declared a ceasefire and entered a period of passivity until 2004. Meanwhile, the year 2002 marked a turning point in Turkish politics as the AKP won a landslide victory in the general elections and has since then remained in power. The next chapter will turn an eye toward the AKP’s attempt at using Sunni Islam as an overarching identity and the historical roots of the idea of a Muslim ummah.

İstanbul and hundreds of Hizbullah members were detained. They have managed to survive as an underground organization and in 2013 founded a political party with the name of Hür Dava Partisi (Free Cause Party). For more information on the subject, see the extended second edition (2011) of Ruşen Çakır’s Derin Hizbullah: İslamcı Şiddetin Geleceği [Deep Hizbullah: The Future of Islamist Violence] (İstanbul:  Metis Yayınları), as well as Mehmet Kurt’s 2017 book Kurdish Hizbullah in Turkey: Islamism, Violence and the State (London: Pluto Press).

2 “Islam as Cement”: The Way Out? All Muslims, differing though they may be in their language, color, domicile, or other conditions, form but one [single] nation, bound together by their common faith, moving in a single direction, drawing on one common cultural heritage, assuming one mission throughout the world.—​The Mecca Declaration of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (1981)

Sitting in a dimly lit office in Diyarbakır’s historic Sur neighborhood, I am listening to İmam Mehmed talk about how Islam could help end the Kurdish conflict. A big, tall guy, Mehmed is a state-​appointed imam. He has resided in Diyarbakır all his life; his family has been living in the region for generations. Hence, he knows too well the history of the Kurdish conflict, and how it has evolved over time. Over several cups of strong, dark tea (kaçak çay, or “smuggled tea,” as the locals call it), İmam Mehmed tells me how he has yearned all his life for this conflict to end. He talks quite slowly and calmly: “I was in my early teens. One evening my dad was watching the news on TV, I remember him say[ing], with a quite worried voice, ‘this can’t go on like this, it will destroy all of us if they—​the state and the PKK—​go on like this.’ This was almost twenty, twenty-​five years ago. Twenty-​five years on, look where we stand: nothing has changed, the conflict got even worse. My dad is no longer alive; it’s been three years since he passed away; he couldn’t see this conflict end, I doubt I will see it end either.” He stops, and contemplates for a second. “I don’t know,” he says, “I think even our children won’t see this end.” “But you believe Islam could be a solution?” I ask. “Yes, of course! I think the only way out of this deadlock is an emphasis on our common Muslim identity. The Qur’an asks us to ‘make peace

Under the Banner of Islam. Gülay Türkmen, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197511817.003.0003.

“Islam as Cement”  55 between our brothers’ [alluding to Qur’an 49:10], that’s what we should do; we should find a common ground with the help of Islam. We believe in the same God, we believe in the same Prophet, we fought shoulder to shoulder in the War of Independence to save this country from non-​ Muslim invaders, so what is it that we cannot share now, why this fight? We need to remind ourselves that we are Muslim brothers and sisters.” “And how exactly is it that you think Islam could help solve this problem?” “Look, three years ago, we organized a conference titled ‘The Clerics’ Approach to the Kurdish Problem.’ In the final declaration of that conference, we drew attention to Qur’an 49:10, ‘The believers are naught else than brothers. Therefore make peace between your brethren and observe your duty to Allah that haply ye may obtain mercy,’ as well as to a hadith which reads, ‘you won’t be considered true believers as long as you don’t ask for your sibling what you’re asking for yourself.’ We suggested that ‘the equality of human beings is guaranteed under the shadow of the Qur’an.’ Hence, for us, it is quite clear that if you stick by Qur’anic verses and hadiths, you will automatically be guided to the solution to this problem. As another hadith makes clear, ‘a Muslim’s blood, belongings and chastity are forbidden to another Muslim.’ As such, the two fighting parties should immediately declare a ceasefire and find a long-​lasting solution. We imams are ready to constantly emphasize fraternity and peace in our sermons. No party should ignore the religious sensitivities of people living in this region. There is so much the clerics could contribute to the formation of a long-​lasting peace and fraternity. This is the only way out and this is the only way that hasn’t been tried.”

İmam Mehmed’s words display perfectly what I categorize as “supranational religious identity” in my fourfold identity typology. Characterized by a strong belief that Islam could act as a peacemaker in the Kurdish conflict, this approach foregrounds Muslim identity as a supranational identity that could overarch and bridge ethnic differences. As İmam Mehmed makes clear, the solution to the Kurdish conflict, according to this approach, is quite simple: unification under the banner of Islam. It has a simple proposal that propagates ethnic boundary blurring (Lamont, Morning, and Mooney 2002; Wimmer 2009):  Islam prohibits ethno-​nationalism of every kind; neither Turkish nor Kurdish nationalism is acceptable. There is only one identity that Muslims should embrace, and that is Muslim identity. In this, it resembles what Roy defines as “deculturation” (2010), the separation of religious and

56  Under the Banner of Islam cultural markers, a breakaway of religion from culture, resulting in the “purification” of religious identity. This approach also summarizes quite succinctly the policy the AKP government has been pursuing in its negotiations with the Kurdish movement. Convinced that the current deadlock with the Kurds stems from not only the secular Turkish nationalism of the previous governments but also state bureaucracy, the AKP, at least in its first decade in office, turned to Islamic unity as the solution to the Kurdish conflict. In several public statements, then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan emphasized the common religious identity of Sunni Kurds and Turks as the only way out of this conflict. Although this approach did not have that many followers among my respondents (only seven out of 62), it is still worth scrutinizing in detail, as it provides the basis of the main research question I am dealing with, namely the role of Islam as a supranational identity. Hence, in this chapter I will try to provide a better understanding of the origins of this approach, and how and why it came to be embraced by the AKP cadres. In what follows, I will first provide further interview data to exemplify how the supranational religious approach comes to life in the discourses of several religious elites, and how these interviews could be analyzed via Wimmer’s “boundary blurring” (2008) as an analytical tool. Because at the heart of this approach lies an unshakable belief in the historical success of the Muslim ummah, I will examine the extent to which this premise is true. Via a detailed historical overview, I will demonstrate how the unity of Muslims, embodied by the ummah, originated and was practiced in early Islamic history. I will then look at how it was implemented in the Ottoman Empire. Finally, via discourse analysis of statements by Erdoğan, I will demonstrate how the AKP came to embrace a pan-​Islamic solution to the Kurdish conflict, what steps it took toward accomplishing it, and how its attitude toward Kurds compares to that of the Ottomans toward their Muslim subjects.

“There Is Only One Nation and That Is the Nation of Abraham” I am talking to Eşref, a long-​time member of a religious nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Batman. After telling me about the murders conducted in Batman by the Kurdish Hizbullah, the PKK, and the state in the 1990s, he becomes silent, lost in his thoughts. I am used to this; Batman is a

“Islam as Cement”  57 deeply wounded city. Almost all of my interviews in Batman were clouded by the gloomy memories of the 1990s, when the conflict between not only the Turkish state and the PKK, but also between the PKK and the Hizbullah, a Batman-​originated radical Islamic group, reached its peak. While other Kurdish cities in Turkey also suffered from the intense clashes between the Hizbullah and the PKK, Batman suffered the most. Everyone I talked to in Batman told me about Hizbullah-​style assassinations—​conducted during daytime, with three shots to the back—​that claimed the lives of many.1 Those memories are still fresh in the minds of Batman’s residents. Nevertheless, Batman is still a Hizbullah stronghold. After the Hizbullah transformed into a legal political party, with the name of Hüda-​Par (the Party of God)/​Hür Dava Partisi (Free Cause Party) in December 2012, it managed to get 8.08% of the votes in Batman in the municipal elections in 2014 (whereas it got only 0.20% of the votes countrywide). In the general elections in June 2015, in which the party was represented by an independent candidate, this number stood at 5.3%. As such, Batman provides an important case in inquiring about the discord among Sunni Muslims in Turkey. As it stands, it is home to a three-​way division among Sunni Muslims: those supporting the PKK, those supporting the Hizbullah, and those supporting the state. In such an atmosphere, it was interesting to hear Eşref advocate the brotherhood of Kurdish and Turkish Muslims as the only solution to the Kurdish conflict. Despite all he has witnessed, he still believes that Islam could be the only way out: “Turks and Kurds are united in Islam. Islam is the strongest link between us, that’s what kept us together when the Ottoman Empire dissolved. Hence, we should cling to it. Allah warns us against schism. In Qur’an 3:103 he clearly asks us to not become divided: ‘Hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together and do not become divided. And remember the favor of Allah upon you—​when you were enemies and He brought your hearts together and you became, by His favor, brothers’ (Surat al-​Imran). However, it seems like many Muslims today have forgotten this simple fact and 1 In an article he wrote for Al-​Monitor, journalist Kadri Gürsel estimates that about “700 people were killed in the clashes between the mainstream Kurdish movement, the PKK and Hizbullah.” In an attempt to silence rival groups, the Hizbullah “abducted more than 100 rival Islamists, tortured and buried them in what was dubbed a repugnant ‘houses of graves.’ ” Kadri Gürsel, “New ‘Party of God’ Will Divide Kurdish, Turkish Islamists,” Al-​Monitor, December 23, 2012, http://​www. al-​monitor.com/​pulse/​originals/​2012/​al-​monitor/​hizbullah-​turkey-​islamist.html#ixzz421jg5Ka8 (retrieved February 14, 2016).

58  Under the Banner of Islam become deaf to what Allah has asked of them. They read the Qur’an, they read the hadiths but they ignore the messages in there, they interpret them as they like. If only they could give an ear to what Allah asks of them they would know that any fighting between Muslims is banned!” “Well, then why does this conflict go on? Why is it that they don’t listen to Allah or the Qur’an?” “I blame nationalism for it. There is only one nation for me and that is the nation of İbrahim [Abraham].” Serhat, a middle-​aged Kurdish man, who is the head of a religious NGO in Diyarbakır, was in complete agreement with Eşref. As a pious Muslim, well versed in both Islamic theology and philosophy, Serhat first gave me a long speech about the harm done by nationalism in several Muslim countries. He then shook his head in disapproval and continued: “You know what I am afraid of? I am afraid that this negative nationalism will take hold of our youth and establish itself as the strongest ideology in this area. Then we are really doomed. If there is one thing that has kept us—​Turks and Kurds—​together for so long, it is our common belief. We might disagree on certain issues but we have a common culture shaped by our belief, we have similar traditions stemming from our belief, we have the same prayers, we share the same mosques, we mourn our dead the same way, we celebrate the same religious feasts. If we lose this common ground, I don’t know what else would keep us together. Our understanding of Islamism is one that is purified of nationalism but unfortunately neither Kurdish Islamism nor Turkish Islamism in Turkey has managed to accomplish this purification yet. For a very long time, the Kurdish nationalism we fought against expressed itself exclusively as a secular current. However, it has recently started taking on a religious identity. We have already been trying to purify Islamism in western Turkey of the corroborating impact of Turkish nationalism, now we have a new front to fight on: we are trying to clean up Islamism of the negative effects of Kurdish nationalism.” Mele Musa, a non-​affiliated Kurdish imam in his seventies, also underlined this discrepancy between Islam and nationalism. According to him, the Kurdish movement is actually detrimental to the Kurdish people because it promotes menfi (negative) nationalism among Kurds. He tells me about how

“Islam as Cement”  59 he has been threatened several times by the PKK because of his stance against their secular nationalist worldview: “Islam does not distinguish between different ethnicities. It treats all races and ethnicities equally and unites them all under an Islamic identity. Racism and negative nationalism is [sic] forbidden in Islam, they are haram. Qur’an 49:10 tells us that ‘the believers are naught else than brothers.’ It then goes on to suggest that we ‘make peace between our brethren.’ As displayed clearly by this verse, Kurds, Turks, and all other Muslims are brothers. This perspective is also endorsed by a hadith that lauds Islam for ‘getting rid of racism that was prevalent among Arabs during the jahiliyya period.’ That’s why I refrain from supporting the Kurdish movement. I believe it strengthens negative nationalism among Kurds; in turn, it weakens the Islamic link that ties Turks and Kurds.” “So you blame nationalism for the current fight between Kurds and Turks?” “Let me correct one thing before I go on: I refuse to classify this conflict as one between Kurds and Turks. It is a fight between the PKK, which claims to be the sole representative of all Kurds but actually is not, and the Turkish state, which claims to be acting on behalf of all Turks, but actually is not. Hence, rather than a fight between Kurds and Turks, this is a fight between the PKK and the Turkish state. Secondly, I don’t think nationalism is the only reason for the current fight. However, it constitutes a big part of it. The sun illuminates everyone. It doesn’t distinguish between people saying ‘let me illuminate whites but not blacks.’ Islam is like the sun in that sense. It illuminates all of us no matter what our ethnicity is. The Prophet, in his last sermon, says, ‘All mankind is created from Adam and Eve. An Arab has no superiority over a non-​Arab, nor does a non-​Arab have any superiority over an Arab; white has no superiority over black, nor does a black have any superiority over white; [none has superiority over another] except by piety and good action.’ Hence, I find both Turkish and Kurdish nationalism quite harmful.” Another person to voice this concern was Cemal Hoca, who is a member of the Qadiri Sufi order, which promotes a strong adherence to the fundamentals of Islam. Originally from Siirt—​a city that is predominantly home to Turkish citizens of Arab origin—​and half Kurdish (on his mother’s side), half Arabic (on his father’s side), Cemal Hoca condemns strongly any kind of “racism” (as he puts it):

60  Under the Banner of Islam “In the past, it was only thanks to Islam that Kurds, Turks, Zazas, and Arabs could live together in this region. It is only when people drifted away from Islam that these acts of terrorism emerged here. If you establish the whole system on racism, if you constantly emphasize your Kurdishness, then it will cause problems. The same goes for Turks. The fact that we are all Muslims is the biggest reason for us to unite. This racism is triggered by ‘outside forces,’ it is provoked by them. In the past they played on the Arab-​Turkish conflict to bring the Ottoman Empire down, now they are using the Kurdish-​Turkish conflict to weaken the Turkish Republic. Look, I am half Arab half Kurdish, my daughter-​in-​laws are Turkish, my uncle is Kurdish; how are we to be separated? We simply cannot, it is not possible. That is why Islam is the only solution; we could easily unite in our Muslim identity. Islam refuses racism of any kinds. Our whole aim is to serve Islam, we don’t have any political ideology, Islam is our only ideology.” As these quotations display quite clearly, in an attempt to “overcome ethnicity as a principle of categorization and social organization altogether” these elites are employing “ethnic boundary blurring” as formulated by Wimmer (2008, 2009). Keeping in mind the fact that “universal moral qualities and membership in the human family are often evoked by the most excluded and stigmatized groups” (Wimmer 2008: 989), it is not surprising that all the religious elites embracing this approach are Kurdish.2 By emphasizing the religious commonality between Kurds and Turks, they promote their membership in the Muslim ummah so as to “undermine the legitimacy of ethnic and national boundaries” (Wimmer 2008: 989). In doing so, most of these religious elites display a strong yearning for a past in which Islam played a unifying role and ethnic and national boundaries were not so clear-​ cut. While Eşref cites Islam as the only reason that kept Turks and Kurds together after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Mele Musa talks about the early Islamic community as a model to be aspired to in that it eradicated the racism prevalent among Arab tribes at the time, and Cemal Hoca refers 2 Because my sample of Turkish Muslims was much smaller, I haven’t spotted this approach among the Turkish Muslims I  interviewed. It might be that there are fewer Turkish Muslims endorsing this approach, as the Turkish-​Islamic synthesis of the state has too strong an impact in these circles (Sakallıoğlu 1998). It might also be that, as suggested by Wimmer and Lamont, Kurdish Muslims are using this strategy to escape stigmatization and exclusion by other groups, while Turkish Muslims simply don’t feel the need to do so as they belong to the majority. Nevertheless, it would still be misleading to claim that Turkish Muslims refute this approach completely.

“Islam as Cement”  61 to a time when different ethno-​national groups in the region lived peacefully side by side thanks to Islam. As such, they all seem to agree that an Islamic rule would be the solution to the current ethno-​national problems the region is facing. How correct is such a portrayal, though? Is there any period in Islamic history when Islam managed to play the unifying role suggested by my respondents? If so, how successful was such a project? To answer these questions I will now have a short glance at the evolution of the concept of Islamic unity—​ummah—​and its implementation throughout Islamic history.

The Ummah That Never Was Even though my respondents conceptualize the Muslim community as a unified ummah that began to erode under the influence of nationalism, in reality, ummah as “a tightly united, global Muslim community that acts as a single, autonomous organism [ . . . ] has never existed on any socially significant scale” (Karamustafa 2010: 94).3 As a pan-​Islamic, transnational community of adherents to Islam (Jones and Mas 2011: 4) the ummah has had to confront the political reality of ideological and provincial divisions (Irwin 1986)  and to compete with different identity categories, be they tribal or ethnic (Eickelman and Piscatori 1996). While today’s communication technologies and immigrant webs might help ease the formation of that transnational pan-​Islamic community (Nielsen 1999), “the development of a transethnic Muslim community [ . . . ] must confront realities embedded in historic national or ethnic relations and in divisions within Islam” (Grillo 2004: 867). To explain this “ummah paradox,” Marranci argues that throughout Islamic history the ummah has been “characterized by a shared basic ethos” (2008: 114), and sectarian and other divisions can be seen as part of an internal dynamic that does not contradict this ethos. Similarly, Karamustafa claims that a tightly united global Muslim community has existed only as an idea, but not in practice (2010: 94–​95). Aydın (2017) goes one step further and demonstrates that even the very idea of a global ummah did not exist up until the late nineteenth century. Notions of ummah and Muslimness existed 3 I  am thankful to Kirsten Wesselhoeft for her useful comments on an earlier version of this section.

62  Under the Banner of Islam in the eighteenth century, “but whatever they meant, it would be almost a hundred years more before they inspired narratives of global Muslim unity along either geopolitical or civilizational lines” (Aydın 2017: 15). Indeed, a glance at the early history of Islam reveals that rather than Muslim unity, Muslim disunity was the rule from the beginning. The term ummah is used in a variety of ways in the Qur’an. In its broader sense, it does not specifically refer to the Muslim community, but rather to any community of believers to whom a prophet was sent. While this comprehensive meaning of ummah is found in the Qur’an in the earlier Meccan verses, the narrower meaning of it, referring specifically to the followers of Muhammad and Islam, is elaborated in the later Medinan verses (Al-​Ahsan 1986: 609). In its traditional ordering, the word ummah appears in the Qur’an for the first time in Surat al-​Baqarah, a Medinan surah: “O our Sustainer! Make us surrender ourselves unto Thee, and make out of our offspring a community that shall surrender (ummah muslimah) itself unto Thee, and show us our ways of worship, and accept our repentance” (2:128).4 Here, we see not only the word ummah but also the phrase ummah muslimah5 for the first time. The Qur’an later defines this ummah as “the best community (khayra ummatin) that has ever been brought forth for (the good of) mankind” (3:110). In the Constitution of Medina, also known as the pact of Medina, which “records a set of deeds executed by Muhammad after his migration (hijra) from Mecca to Yathrib, subsequently known as ‘the city (Medina) of the Prophet’ ” (Arjomand 2009:  555), the term ummah covers all believers of Medina and immigrant Muslims from Mecca. Because “the primary object of the document was to establish in Medina a special kind of unity based upon locality, or territory, not on the traditional basis of kinship [ . . . ] all groups dwelling in Medina proper were to participate” (Rubin 1985: 9) in this unity. What was distinguishable about this confederation is that it offered protection to even those who were not previously members of any tribe. It “allowed for the tribal identities of those who accepted the faith of Islam” (Al-​Ahsan 1986:  611) but prioritized religious attachment over tribal attachments. It was “itself the tribe, a supertribe, with God and Muhammad as final arbiters and authorities” (Denny 1977: 47).

4 Translation taken from the online version of Muhammad Asad’s “Message of the Quran,” no date, p. 57, http://​muhammad-​asad.com/​ (retrieved January 10, 2020). 5 Note, however, that here the word muslimah had not yet taken its present-​day meaning of Muslim. It only stands for “those who surrender.”

“Islam as Cement”  63 This attempt to resolve the clash of loyalties was, however, an unsuccessful one. As soon as Muhammad died (632), tribal conflicts re-​emerged. Of the four Rashidun Caliphs, only Abu Bakr died a natural death; Umar, Uthman, and Ali were all assassinated as a result of internal conflicts that originated from the old feuds between the ruling clans.

Ummah in the Period of Rashidun Caliphs Muhammad belonged to Banu Hashim, a clan of the Quraysh tribe. His early enemies in Mecca belonged to the rival clan of Banu Umayyah. Although the leader of Banu Umayyah, Abu Sufyan, had opposed Muhammad nearly all his life, his clan eventually accepted Islam. Because of this problematic history, members of Banu Umayyah were viewed with suspicion. This distrust made itself apparent during the reign of Uthman, who belonged to the Umayyah clan and was killed in 656. Things became even more entangled when Ali succeeded Uthman. Ali’s supporters considered Abu Bakr, Uthman, and Umar as usurpers of the Caliphate since they believed that Ali deserved to be the Caliph to succeed Muhammad as he was his kin.6 Shortly after Ali’s succession, two inter-​ Muslim conflicts, the Battle of Camel (656) and the Battle of Siffin (657), took place. The former was fought between Ali and followers of Talha and Zubair, two powerful Meccans, and Muhammad’s widow Aisha. The latter took place between Ali and Muawiya, the governor of Syria at the time and a member of Banu Umayyah, who, like Talha and Zubair, wanted to revenge Uthman’s death. Even though revenge was Muawiya’s apparent motive, the Battle of Siffin is believed to be more about “the old rivalry between the clans of Umayyah and Hashim” (Mahmud 1960: 53). In addition to sharpening tribal identities, the Battle of Siffin gave birth to sectarianism. Followers of Ali who supported him against Muawiya came to be known as the shi‘at Ali (Ali’s party) from thereon.7 Moreover, when Ali decided to refer the dispute between him and Muawiya for arbitration, “those who belonged to the tribe of Banu Tamim broke with Ali, withdrew to the village of Harura to the north of Kufa, and elected their own Caliph, 6 The Shi‘a also refer to a hadith in which Muhammad is believed to say, “Whomsoever I am the authority over, Ali is also the authority over” (quoted in Halm 2007: 3). 7 Note, however, that “the resistance of the Shi‘a at this time had not yet assumed a specifically religious character. It was merely a party in the struggle for power” (Halm 2007: 6).

64  Under the Banner of Islam Abdullah al-​Rasibi” (Mahmud 1960: 54). This group came to be known as the Kharijites. As such, the Muslim ummah was divided into three separate groups, and tribal identities as well as power politics were the main factors in bringing about this result. After Ali’s death in 661, Muawiya became the new Caliph. When he appointed his son Yazid as his successor, hence founding the Umayyad Empire, the Caliphate ceased to be the elective theocracy it was and became a hereditary, secularized institution in a monarchy (Al-​Ahsan 1986; Ataman 2003; Rosenthal 1965). More importantly, the reign of Yazid consolidated the division between Muslims when Yazid’s soldiers killed Ali’s son Hussain in 680. This not only fostered the Shi‘a identity as a distinct religious identity, but also helped legitimize the status of the Prophet’s family (Ahl al-​Bait) in the eyes of the Shi‘a.

Ummah under the Abbasids: The Shuubiya Controversy The Umayyad Empire fell in 750 at the hands of the Abbasids. One of the Umayyad princes, Abd al-​Rahman ibn Muawiyah ibn Hisham, who managed to escape the Abbasids, was later to establish the Umayyad Caliphate in Andulus. The power now having changed hands, the feud between the Banu Hashim and Banu Umayyah reappeared in its full force (Mahmud 1960: 87). With such tribal conflict still on the stage, with Kharijites and Umayyads forming their own Caliphates, and the Shi‘a establishing the Imamate,8 the Muslim ummah was quite torn. Yet, there was more to come. As the Islamic Empire took control of lands outside the Arabian Peninsula, there emerged a tension between Muslims of Arab origin and Muslims of non-​Arab origin (especially Perso-​Arameans). Known as the Shuubiya controversy (Goldziher 1966; Savran 2007), this conflict highlighted ethnicity as another identity marker demanding the loyalty of Muslims. Starting at the end of the Umayyad Empire (661–​750), it covered a span of two centuries (from the eighth to the tenth centuries). Having taken its name from the Qur’anic verse which reads, “O mankind! Behold! We have created you

8 For the sake of brevity, I  don’t go into the details of the establishment of the Shi‘a Imamate. Suffice it to say that the Imamate has as detailed a history as the Caliphate and it was not immediately founded after the Battle Siffin. It took the Shi‘a another century to theorize and elaborate the details of the Imamate.

“Islam as Cement”  65 all out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations9 (shuuban) and tribes (qabail), so that you might come to know one another” (49:13) the Shuubiya movement demanded the equality of non-​Arab Muslims with Arab Muslims in administration as well as in society. As quoted several times by my respondents, Prophet Muhammad, in his last sermon, had underlined this equality as follows: “ ‘O human beings! Pay attention, your Creator is one. No Arab is superior to an Ajami (non-​Arab) and no Ajami (non-​Arab) is superior to an Arab. Black race is not superior to White race, and White race is not superior to Black race. The superiority is in piety’ ” (Ataman 2003: 45). Over time, the controversy transformed into an ethnic struggle between Arabs and non-​Arabs over whose culture and past were more glorious.10 Hence, the Shuubiya came to be equated with any attempt at undermining Arab (especially Bedouin) culture and traditions, while the countermovement, anti-​Shuubiya, came to be associated with glorifying Arab culture and preserving Arab unity. If this is the case, if Muslim disunity has been the norm since the early days of Islam, why do some of my respondents, as well as AKP politicians, propose an Islamic solution to the Kurdish conflict? Why do they think that implementing Islam as an overarching, supranational identity might help unify Sunni Kurds and Sunni Turks? The next section provides an answer to this question.

The Ottoman Ummah: A Dream Come True? In the small, carpeted office of DİAY-DER (Association for the Solidarity of Ulama/​Din Alimleri Yardımlaşma ve Dayanışma Derneği) in Diyarbakır, across from two elderly meles, I am listening to the story of how these meles came to be involved in the Civil Friday prayers. After an hour-​long conversation about the prayers in particular and the Kurdish conflict in general, I ask a question about the closure of madrasas in 1924. Because Ottoman Kurdistan was home to numerous influential madrasas, they were considered a double threat by the state as potential sources of Islamism and Kurdish nationalism. 9 Although Asad, Yusuf Ali, and Pickthall translate shuub as “nation,” Sahih International translates it as “people” (all translations other than Asad’s have been taken from www.quran.com). 10 Although the Shuubiya controversy took place during the reign of the Abbasids, Arabicizing of the Empire started under the Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik (685–​705) who made Arabic the state language and replaced Greek coins with Arabic coins (Mahmud 1960).

66  Under the Banner of Islam It is still possible to find madrasas in most Kurdish cities. However, most of the meles I talked to complained about the declining quality of education, claiming that these new madrasas are only a shadow of the earlier ones. In response to my question, one of the meles, Mele Abdullah, bursts out: “You know what?” He looks at me straight in the eye, and I can easily read his fury from his face. “This all goes back to the foundation of the Republic. The Ottomans did not intervene in the affairs of the Kurdish tribes. Besides, there was no clear Kurdish identity at that time, no distinct Laz or Armenian identity, either; there was an overarching Ottoman identity. As you know, several Ottoman generals were foreign-​born:  Albanians, Armenians, you name it. . . . Which is to say that, this problem originates with the establishment of the Turkish Republic.” At this point, the other mele, Mele Hamit, interrupts and says something to Mele Abdullah in Kurdish (which I cannot understand but infer from their body language that it is a warning to prevent him from talking negatively about the Republic, which might, in the long run, cause him “trouble”). After a brief discussion in Kurdish, Mele Abdullah turns to me and continues in Turkish: “Whatever. . . . All I am trying to say is if the madrasas were not closed down we wouldn’t be experiencing these problems today! We would have continued to live together in peace, where Kurds and Turks, as fellow believers, shared the same equal rights.” Fast forward a few days, to a modern-​day madrasa—​a mosque and a three-​story concrete building that is home to a private Qur’an seminary and a dormitory for 80 young boys who are admitted to the seminary at around age seven and study there until age 18. In a small, dusky office on the second floor, I am interviewing Mele Muhammed, a Naqhsbandi cleric who is the head of the madrasa. Although Mele Muhammed does not share the same political views as the DİAY-DER meles, in that he is a fervent supporter of the AKP government, he displays the same nostalgia for the Ottoman past: “Islam was what lay at the heart of Kurds’ loyalty to the Ottoman Empire. This loyalty was shaken during the Tanzimat Era [1839–​1876], when negative (menfi) nationalism made its way into the Empire. It was then shuttered to pieces when the Turkish Republic abolished the Caliphate in 1924 and established, in its place, the Diyanet, which was, and still is, the full embodiment of this negative nationalism.” As these two anecdotes display, nostalgia for the Ottoman past was quite widespread among the Kurdish clerics I interviewed. Even though their views on the policies of the current government differed, they seemed to agree on

“Islam as Cement”  67 the fact that the roots of the “Kurdish problem” lay in the early Republican attitude toward both Kurds and Islam. Convinced by a strong belief that the Ottomans managed to rule and unite groups of different ethnic origin much more successfully, they advocated a return to the Ottoman Caliphate and the rule of Islam as the solution to modern-​day ethnic conflicts not only in Turkey, but also in the broader Middle East. According to this account, the Ottomans handled the ethnic differences between Kurds and Turks much better because they implemented Islam as a unifying identity. In what follows, I assess the validity of such an assumption. The Ottoman claim to the leadership of the Muslim world started with their acquisition of the title of the Caliphate in 1517. The Abbasids held the office of the Caliphate until 1258 and there followed, after the Abbasids, “a line of shadow, nominal, puppet Caliphs in Cairo [under Mamluks] reduced to a position similar to ‘household officials’ of the amirs”11 (Abdul 1976:  121). The last of these Mamluk caliphs, al-​Mutawakkil, was carried away to Constantinople in 1517 when the Ottoman Sultan Selim I conquered Egypt and Syria, putting an end to the Mamluk rule. Thus began the period of the Ottoman Caliphate. Ottoman Empire was multiethnic, multilingual, and multireligious. To successfully rule this multicultural community, the Ottomans established the millet system, in which one’s main identity derived from one’s religious affiliation. There were three fundamental millets: Eastern Orthodox Christian, Armenian Apostolic Christian, and Jewish (see Barkey 2005 for more on the millet system). In this system, Christians and Jews (as “people of the book”) were protected but unequal subjects of the Empire (Itzkowitz 1972). In return for the payment of an extra tax called cizye, they were granted autonomy in their internal affairs and regulated a good part of the lives of their members, including the judicial affairs pertaining to civil society. As for Muslims, they were subject to the Ottoman Sultan, both politically and religiously. Drawing their legitimacy from the title “the Caliph of the Muslim world,” Ottoman Sultans ruled over Muslim lands for centuries. While the first period of the Ottoman Caliphate (1517–​1774) witnessed a dormant Caliphate, the second period (1774–​1924) witnessed an active one. Even though Ottoman Sultans had the title since 1517, it was only after 1774 that they began foregrounding it. Thus, Ottoman Sultans until the late



11 Amir is the Arabic word for “prince.”

68  Under the Banner of Islam eighteenth century saw themselves as Caliphs, by the will of God, but only to establish their dominant position in and mastery over the Muslim world. “What happened was that after Selim, the Ottoman state developed the old-​ tradition of a ghazi-​border state and revived the old Islamic Caliphate in a new form. The new conception of the Caliphate was based on the fulfillment of the tasks of Ghaza12 and on the defence and protection of Islam” (İnalcık 1970: 322–​323). What is remarkable in this period is the explicit emphasis on the title by the Sultans and their intention to use it internationally to secure their political status. As early as 1727, Sultan Ahmed III, in a treaty with the ruler of Persia, “called himself ‘Caliph of all Muslims’ and tried to get Nadir Shah of Persia to recognize the same title” (İnalcık 1970: 320). However, as noted earlier, the 1774 Küçükkaynarca Treaty with Russia is the first international treaty in which the Ottomans made official use of the Caliphate to maintain some rights, as the treaty concerned the loss of Crimea, the first Muslim-​ populated territory to be detached from the Ottoman state. Not only was Küçükkaynarca the first international treaty by which the Ottoman Sultan showed his intention to use the Caliphate as a political instrument against his “infidel” enemies, but it was also “the first agreement to uphold a separation between the political and religious authority of the Sultan” (Buzpınar 2005: 19). The Sultan would have no say in the political affairs of Crimea, while as Caliph he would still have a say in the religious affairs of the territory. Moreover, this arrangement set the tone for all other Ottoman treaties concerning the loss of Muslim territories. The spirit of the separation of religious and political duties of the Sultan and the treatment of the Caliphate as the spiritual leader of all Muslims reached its peak during the reign of Abdülhamid II, who, at the very beginning of his reign, had this claim inserted into Article 4 of the first Ottoman constitution in 1876: “The Sultan, by virtue of the Caliph, is the protector of the religion of Islam and the ruler and Emperor of all Ottoman subjects” (Buzpınar 2005: 19). He made use of the Caliphate in policies for Islamic unity against foreign imperial powers that had a vast number of Muslim colonies. He was so extreme in his emphasis on the caliphal duties of the Ottoman Sultan that “he was raised to Sainthood in the eyes of his people. [ . . . ] These efforts were very effective on Muslims in South Asia and India”



12 Ghaza, in the Ottoman context, means “war against infidels.”

“Islam as Cement”  69 (Eraslan 2001: 2–​3), who would later play an active role in trying to prevent the abolishment of the Caliphate. As I will elaborate further in Chapter 4, it was in the nineteenth century, with the arrival of nationalism in the Empire and the revolts of the ethnic groups in the Balkans (e.g., Greeks around the 1820s, Serbians, Bulgarians, and Romanians around the 1870s), that the Ottomans had to revise the millet system (Mardin 2005; Belge and Günçıkan 2006) and put in its place an alternative ideology, Ottomanism, which was to flourish with the practice of Tanzimat reforms (Hanioğlu 1995; Ersanlı 2003). The Tanzimat reforms of 1839 and 1876, which marked the consolidation of the modernization of state in the Ottoman Empire, also marked the dissolution of the millet system, for they introduced laws providing egalitarian guarantees for Muslims and non-​ Muslims alike, emphasizing the notion of Ottoman citizenship (Spencer 1958; Lewis 1968). The 1869 Ottoman nationality law had recognized all non-​Muslims as citizens of the Empire, hence annulling their status as separate, unequal but protected communities, which practically dissolved the millet system (Barkey and Gavrilis 2016: 28). Following the abolition of the parliament in 1878, Abdülhamid II put an end to Tanzimat reforms and brought into political arena the idea of Islamism as a countercurrent to the Ottomanism of the Tanzimat period. Contrary to the Tanzimat administrators, who tried to employ Ottomanism as an overarching identity for both Muslim and non-​Muslim subjects of the Empire, Abdülhamid envisioned Islam as an element unifying Muslim Ottomans. This, in his unique way, was an alternative approach to the problem of constituting a nation (Mardin 2005). Such an account would affirm the Kurdish meles’ claim that Kurds and Turks had a stronger connection in the Ottoman Empire than they do in the Turkish Republic. However, upon further inquiry, one realizes that this supposition is correct only to a certain extent: While Islam played a great role in unifying Ottoman Muslims against the Empire’s non-​Muslim subjects, even the Ottomans were forced to recognize the ethnic differences among their Muslim subjects. As Barkey and Gavrilis explain, though all Muslims were subject to the same regulations, “there was a different outcome in areas where particular ethnic and religious differences coincided with territory” (2016: 27). Thus, in the eastern provinces of the Empire, “Kurdish territories were subject to a negotiated settlement, to increased autonomy, to less taxation and to some special privileges” (Barkey and Gavrilis 2016:  27). As surveyed in the previous chapter, there were several uprisings in these

70  Under the Banner of Islam provinces, especially starting in the nineteenth century, and “the Ottoman state provided the Kurdish tribal leaders with hereditary land grants to ensure their loyalty to the Ottomans” (Barkey 2008). Moreover, there were also uprisings in the predominantly Muslim Arab provinces of the Empire (Khalidi et al. 1991). Hence, although Islam was a powerful bond between the Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire, it was still limited in its ability to suppress ethnic differences, let alone form a unified ummah. This nostalgia for a peaceful Ottoman past in which different ethnic groups lived in harmony also constitutes the core of the AKP’s insistence on presenting Islam as the solution to the Kurdish conflict. Positioning itself as the only heir to the Ottoman Empire, the AKP, up until the early 2010s, thought that it could unite Muslims in the Middle East, including but not limited to Kurds and Turks, under its leadership and go back to the glorious days of the Empire (Özkan 2014; Yeşilada and Rubin 2011). Looking to an “Ottoman-​ inspired pan-​ Islamic cosmopolitanism” (Reynolds 2015:  33) and believing that “the Ottoman past holds the key to the future of Turkey” (Yavuz 2009: 95) the AKP cadres, for a while, took upon themselves the mission of bringing back “the Ottoman golden era.” It is with such a mindset that they started several initiatives to end the Kurdish conflict.

AKP’s Kurdish Policy: Neo-​Ottoman Pan-​Islamism Speaking in Siirt, a city in Turkey’s southeast, in 1997, when he was mayor of İstanbul, Erdoğan said: They tell me “you’re from Rize [a northeastern city by the Black Sea], you must be Laz [an ethnic minority living in Turkey’s Black Sea region and in Georgia].” I tell them “I am not Laz.” I’ve asked my dad about this, who in turn asked his grandfather who was a molla [a religious title]. Apparently this is how my dad’s grandfather replied:  “When we die, Allah will ask us: ‘Who is your God; who is your prophet; what is your religion?’ However, he won’t ask us about our nation (kavim).” When they ask you [about your nationality], just say, “Thanks be to Allah, I am a Muslim.”13

13 “Kimlik değişimi,” Milliyet, December 13, 2005, http://​www.milliyet.com.tr/​2005/​12/​13/​siyaset/​ axsiy02.html (retrieved February 2, 2016).

“Islam as Cement”  71 Several years later, in 2005, at a speech he made in Christchurch, New Zealand, Erdoğan would reiterate the same idea: There are about 30 different ethnic groups in Turkey; Turks, Kurds, Laz, Circassians, Georgians, Abkhazians, Albanians, Bosnians, what have you. All these ethnic elements are connected via shared religious bonds, because 99% of Turkey is Muslim. As such, whatever problems our citizens of Kurdish-​origin are experiencing, our citizens of Turkish-​origin, as well as our citizens of Laz-​origin, are also experiencing.14

Earlier that year, Erdoğan had introduced the distinction of supra-​versus sub-​identities (üst kimlik-​alt kimlik) and emphasized, over and over, Turkish citizenship as a “supra-​identity.” According to this distinction, all the previously mentioned identities were sub-​identities, while Turkish citizenship was a supra-​identity overarching them all. In line with his New Zealand speech, he made sure to differentiate Turkishness as an ethnic identity from Turkish citizenship as an umbrella identity. In his famous Diyarbakır speech on August 12, 2005, he declared the Kurdish problem to be his own problem, as “that problem is not particular to a certain component of this society but it is the problem of us all, including myself. These type[s]‌of problems do not belong to a certain section of the population, they belong to all Turkish citizens be they Turkish, Kurdish, Circassian, Abkhazian, Laz.”15 Similarly, in November 2015, speaking in Şemdinli, a predominantly Kurdish town, Erdoğan said: We’ll do away with ethno-​nationalism. Turks, Kurds, Circassians, Laz, what have you, we’ll all be one and together under the supra-​identity of Turkish citizenship. We will respect sub-​identities, so that the Turk will be able to say she’s a Turk, the Kurd will be able to say she’s a Kurd, the Laz will be able to say she’s Laz. Everyone will have to respect this. But we all have a supra-​ identity that is Turkish citizenship. This should disturb no one, because this is our constitutional citizenship. No one is judged in this country according

14 “Ortak kimlik din,” Sabah, December 7, 2005, http://​arsiv.sabah.com.tr/​2005/​12/​07/​gnd111. html (retrieved February 2, 2016). 15 “Erdoğan: Kürt sorunu hepimizin sorunu,” Bianet, August 12, 2005, http://​bianet.org/​bianet/​ siyaset/​65194-​erdoğan-​kürt-​sorunu-​hepimizin-​sorunu (retrieved February 3, 2016).

72  Under the Banner of Islam to her ethno-​national identity. As the famous poet Yunus Emre puts it, “we love the created for the creator’s sake.”16

At first glance, these speeches seem to contradict each other in that some highlight Sunni Islam as a supra-​national bond that unites Turkish citizens of different ethno-​national backgrounds, while others present Turkish citizenship as the supra-​identity that unites Turkish citizens. Upon his return from New Zealand, on December 11, 2015, a journalist inquired about this seeming contradiction. Erdoğan clarified his point as follows: Look, I know too well what I said; do not take my words out of context. My statement about religion being a bond for different ethnic groups in Turkey was uttered in response to Deniz Baykal’s [then leader of the main opposition party CHP] metaphor of Yugoslavia. Turkey is not Yugoslavia where Serbs, Croatians and Bosnians all belonged to different religions. There, even those belonging to the same religion had differing sects. In Turkey, on the other hand, we have about 30 ethno-​national groups. Then, in a country where 99% of the population is Muslim, religion acts like cement. I have never said that religion is our supra-​identity; what I refer to by “supra-​identity,” and I’ve said this several times before, is Turkish citizenship. Religion, on the other hand, is the cement between us, it is currently the biggest unifying factor for us.17

These speeches summarize quite well Erdoğan’s attitude toward the Kurdish conflict in the first decade of the 2000s. In line with the AKP’s neo-​Ottomanist world-​view (Taşpınar 2012), Erdoğan promulgated an “Ottoman-​inspired pan-​Islamism” that rises on two main pillars: Islam and Turkish citizenship. Just like the Ottoman millet system, it foregrounds religion, particularly Sunni Islam, as the main identity of the constituents of Turkish society; and just like Ottomanism, which foregrounded Ottoman identity as a supra-​identity overarching all ethnic differences, it highlights Turkish citizenship as an umbrella term that is separate from and above all ethno-​national identities. In such a framing, Turkishness loses its special status, as configured by the founding cadres of the Turkish Republic, and 16 “Erdoğan: Puslu havaya aldanmayın,” Hürriyet, November 21, 2005, http://​www.hurriyet.com. tr/​erdoğan-​puslu-​havaya-​aldanmayin-​3546774 (retrieved February 3, 2016). 17 “Erdoğan: Din Türkiye’nin çimentosudur,” in Hürriyet, December 11, 2005, http://​www.hurriyet. com.tr/​erdoğan-​din-​turkiye-​nin-​cimentosudur-​3634007 (retrieved February 3, 2016).

“Islam as Cement”  73 becomes just another ethnic identity, along with Kurdishness. As he makes quite clear by referring to “citizens of Turkish-​origin,” for Erdoğan of the early 2000s, the heart of Turkish citizenship is not Turkishness per se but Sunni Islam. All those who subscribe to Sunni Islam are considered Turkish citizens, regardless of their ethno-​nationalist identity. Moreover, Islam is such an overarching identity that no matter which ethnic group you belong to, you are automatically a member of “the nation of Islam” (the Muslim ummah). In the eyes of Erdoğan, that is what matters. Formulated this way, Erdoğan’s “Muslim Turkish citizenship” is way too reminiscent of Abdülhamid II’s “Muslim Ottoman citizenship.” Just like Abdülhamid, Erdoğan rejects a secular understanding of citizenship; swapping “Ottoman” with “Turkish,” he envisions a Turkish citizenship that includes all the different ethnic groups living in Turkey, as long as they are Sunni Muslims. In the preceding speeches, Erdoğan does not mention at all Turkey’s non-​Muslim minorities. The examples he gives (Laz, Kurdish, Abkhazian, Circassian) are all Muslim groups. In that sense, Erdoğan’s “Turkish citizenship,” just like Abdülhamid II’s “Ottoman citizenship,” is Sunni Muslim at its core. Yet, subscribing to the logic of the Ottoman millet system, Erdoğan and the AKP also undertook a “non-​Muslim opening” in the early 2000s and the 2010s. The restoration and reopening of old Armenian churches18 and of the grand synagogue of Edirne,19 as well as the official commemoration of the Holocaust in 201520 and the issuance of an official message on April 24, 2014, “commemorating and sharing the pain Ottoman citizen Armenians experienced in the ‘1915 events’, [ . . . ] [and] conveying condolences to their grandchildren,”21 marked the milestones of this “opening.” To explain these oscillations in Erdoğan’s stance, Şener Aktürk (2018) proposes categorizing the earlier approach as “Muslim nationalism” and the latter as “Islamic multiculturalism.” Different as they may be, they still share the centrality of Islam as their defining feature. 18 “Armenian Church in Turkey Reopens to Worship,” Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2010, https://​www.wsj.com/​articles/​SB10001424052748703556604575501941448923782 (accessed December 9, 2019). 19 “Turkey Unveils Great Synagogue, as Jewish Population Fades,” Reuters, March 25, 2015, https://​ www.reuters.com/​article/​us-​turkey-​jews/​turkey-​unveils-​great-​synagogue-​as-​jewish-​population-​ fades-​idUSKBN0ML1LH20150325 (accessed December 9, 2019). 20 “In First, Turkey to Mark International Holocaust Memorial Day,” Times of Israel, January 22, 2015, https://​www.timesofisrael.com/​in-​first-​turkey-​to-​mark-​international-​holocaust-​memorial-​ day/​(accessed December 9, 2019). 21 The full message in Turkish can be accessed at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website: http://​ www.mfa.gov.tr/ ​ b asbakan- ​ s ayin- ​ recep- ​ t ayyip- ​ e rdogan- ​ 1 915- ​ o laylarina- ​ i liskin- ​ bir- ​ m esaj-​ yayimladi.tr.mfa (accessed December 9, 2019).

74  Under the Banner of Islam In light of all this information, it could be claimed that, according to Erdoğan of the early 2000s, Islam, as a supra-​national identity, could help end the Kurdish conflict in Turkey. If only the Turkish state could implement Islam as an overarching identity, then the Kurds would have no further problems, as they would become equal members of the Muslim Turkish nation (Aktürk 2018; Sarıgil and Fazlıoğlu 2013; Yavuz and Özcan 2006). In reframing the image of the Turkish nation as one built on religious supra-​ nationalism rather than on secular Turkish nationalism, Erdoğan was clearly going against the logic of the modern-​day nation-​state in that he was promoting trans-​ethnic boundaries for the nation, rather than ethnic ones (Wimmer 2008: 991). With this belief in mind, the AKP government, under the leadership of Erdoğan, put into practice several unprecedented, albeit minor, steps toward the solution of the Kurdish conflict. Immediately after its rise to power in 2002, more in an attempt to obtain EU membership than to solve the Kurdish conflict per se, the AKP lifted the 20-​year-​long state of emergency in Turkey’s eastern and southeastern Kurdish provinces. Subsequently, it introduced legislation removing the barriers on broadcasting and teaching in Kurdish.22 Furthermore, a law to compensate the losses of those who were displaced during the clashes between the PKK and the TSK was enacted in 2005 (Yeğen 2015: 5). After a strong election victory in 2007, the AKP introduced a new policy of negotiation and a willingness to endorse a stronger policy of recognition. Toward that end, starting in September 2008, AKP cadres held secret meetings with PKK representatives in Oslo.23 Although these talks later collapsed (as secret recordings from the meetings were leaked), they still managed to give birth to additional policy changes. In 2009, the AKP introduced the “democratic opening,” with the declared aim of putting an end to the Kurdish conflict (Bengio 2014). At its annual congress in 2009, it announced its motto as “Together We Are Turkey (Biz Birlikte Türkiye’yiz).” Describing “the heterogeneity of Turkish society as an asset,”24 it revealed the first features of the democratic opening. The public broadcasting agency, TRT, launched the first state-​run Kurdish language channel, TRT 6, broadcasting entirely in Kurdish. For the first time since 22 See Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs-​Secretariat General for EU Affairs, Political Reforms in Turkey, 2007, pp. 13–​14, http://​www.ab.gov.tr/​files/​pub/​prt.pdf (retrieved February 3, 2016). 23 See Cengiz Çandar, “Oslo’dan bugüne ‘perde arkası’ (1),” Radikal, April 28, 2013, http://​www. radikal.com.tr/​yazarlar/​cengiz_​candar/​_​1-​1131383 (retrieved February 4, 2016). 24 Ferhat Demirel, 2013, “The ‘Kurdish Problem’ and the Peace Process in Turkey,” http://​muftah.org/​ the-​kurdish-​problem-​the-​peace-​process-​in-​turkey#.VrEOxFMrLeQ (retrieved January 28, 2016).

“Islam as Cement”  75 the foundation of the Turkish Republic, Kurdish made its way into school curricula (as an elective course), and was soon introduced in various educational settings, including universities. The Council of Higher Education (YÖK) resolved to establish Kurdish language and literature departments at universities (Yeğen 2015: 6). Finally, the country’s electoral law was changed so that politicians could run election campaigns in Kurdish (Demirel 2013). Thus began the famous “Kurdish opening/​initiative.” In March 2009 the PKK announced a ceasefire. A few months later, in August 2009, in subsequent meetings with journalists, intellectuals, and NGOs, Minister of Interior Beşir Atalay started a public debate on the resolution of the Kurdish conflict. As such, at the end of 2009, the AKP, as an Islamist party pursuing an Islamic solution to the Kurdish conflict, seemed much more promising than its secular counterparts—​which had dominated the Turkish political sphere until then—​in putting an end to the conflict between the PKK and the Turkish armed forces (Aktürk 2012; White 2013). Actually, the idea of employing Islam as a unifying identity in the Kurdish conflict was not novel. As early as 1969, anthropologist Nur Yalman had suggested that if it were not for religious ties there would have been a “Turkish-​Kurdish opposition of a more divisive kind” (1969: 59). Similarly, in 1993 the leader of the islamist RP, Necmettin Erbakan, had said at his party’s parliamentary meeting that only “Muslim fraternity” could combat the PKK (Karmon 1997). Yet, the AKP was the first political party to undertake such concrete steps toward the solution of the conflict. The reforms and the “initiative” came to a halt when in December 2009 the clashes between the PKK and the TSK recommenced. On December 7, the PKK killed seven soldiers in Reşadiye, Tokat.25 On December 11, the Constitutional Court banned the Democratic Society Party (Demokratik Toplum Partisi/DTP), the Kurdish party at the time, in a unanimous decision.26 On June 1, 2010, the PKK decided to end the ceasefire, only to announce a new one, one month later. Hence began the second round of negotiations between the AKP government and the PKK, which would last until June 2011. The third and last round of the peace process started at the beginning of 2013 and culminated in the “Dolmabahçe Agreement”27 on 25 “PKK Reşadiye saldırısını üstlendi,” Bianet, December 10, 2009, http://​bianet.org/​bianet/​ siyaset/​118770 (retrieved February 4, 2016). 26 “DTP kapatıldı,” Hürriyet, December 11, 2009, http://​www.hurriyet.com.tr/​dtp-​kapatildi-​ 13176916 (retrieved February 4, 2016). 27 See Can Dündar, “Dolmabahçe sırları,” Cumhuriyet, July 18, 2015, http://​www.cumhuriyet.com. tr/​koseyazisi/​324711/​Dolmabahce_​sirlari.html (retrieved February 7, 2016).

76  Under the Banner of Islam February 28, 2015. Signed between the HDP and the AKP, it signified the beginning of the disarmament process. While it was as close to peace as Turkey ever got in its fight with the PKK, Erdoğan nullified it on March 22, 2015, when he declared he “does not approve of the agreement.”28 Following these developments, in the general elections of June 2015, the AKP, which “has emerged as the main competitor against ethnic parties in the southeast” in the 2000s (Sarıgil and Fazlıoğlu 2013: 559), experienced a significant loss in Kurdish-​majority provinces (Bayhan 2015). The peace process, as well as the “Muslim fraternity” project, shattered and clashes resumed. Rather than the Islamic-​Turkish approach, prioritizing Islam, the AKP turned toward a Turkish-​Islamist approach, prioritizing Turkishness. There are several reasons for the failure of the peace process (which I will discuss in the Conclusion). Yet, in the following two chapters I will focus on the complexity of religious and ethnic identities and the power dynamics among Kurdish and Turkish religious elites as an explanatory factor in understanding the limited appeal of the “Muslim fraternity” discourse. With the help of interview data, I  will demonstrate that, even as early as 2012, AKP’s “Muslim fraternity” discourse did not resonate well among the religious elites.

28 “Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan Ukrayna dönüşü konuştu: İzleme heyeti de Dolmabahçe toplantısı da yanlış,” Habertürk, March 22, 2015, http://​www.haberturk.com/​gundem/​haber/​1056503-​erdoğan-​ izleme-​heyeti-​de-​dolmabahce-​toplantisi-​da-​yanlis (retrieved February 7,  2016).

3 Muslim Kurds The Case for Religio-​Ethnic Identity

In a tiny store in Diyarbakır’s Çarşiya Şewitî (Burnt Bazaar), I am talking to Mele Mustafa, a madrasa-​educated imam in his seventies, associated neither with the state nor with the Kurdish movement. After having worked as a local imam for seven years, Mele Mustafa quit his job and started working as a watch-​repairer. He accepted my request for an interview rather reluctantly, as he did “not want to talk about these issues that much.” Because he refused to be recorded, I am taking notes, which makes my job a bit more difficult as I need to write quite fast and can’t make eye contact with him. It does not bother him that much, though. He is not that interested in making eye contact anyway. He’s still working on a watch while talking to me. “Yes?” he says, still not looking at me, “what would you like to ask me? I do not have that much time; as you can see, I am quite busy.” “I am doing research on Islam, ethnicity, and nationalism,” I say. “I would like to learn your ideas about how Islam conceptualizes ethnicity, what the Islamic view on nationalism is, and whether an Islamic solution to the Kurdish conflict is possible.” He raises his head from the watch he’s repairing for the first time: “There cannot be any Islamic solution to this conflict, as real Islam does not exist anymore. There is not one single country which is ruled according to Islamic laws; neither Iran nor any Arab country could be claimed to be ‘Islamic.’ What we see in those countries, as well as in Turkey, is the state using religion for its own sake. Whichever nation establishes itself as the ruler in a country, they use religion for their own sake. There are currently 22 Muslim states, none of them is being ruled according to Islam. With the death of the Prophet, real Islam also died, it doesn’t exist anymore. Everyone’s trying to use religion for their interest: the BDP, the state, the PKK. . . . That’s why I quit this job. It doesn’t matter if you are working as a state-​appointed imam or as a madrasa-​educated mele, you always need to obey a ‘ruler,’ be it the state or an agha. Plus, one can be a real Muslim Under the Banner of Islam. Gülay Türkmen, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197511817.003.0004.

78  Under the Banner of Islam only by deeds, not by words. However, our rulers are Muslim only in their words but not in their deeds. Take Erdoğan, for example, he does not reflect his belief into his deeds.” “How so? What do you mean by that?” “He talks like a Muslim but he does not act like one. God tells us that he has sent the Qur’an to the Arab people in Arabic so that they can understand it [Qur’an 43: 2], he asks us to respect people’s native tongues but Erdoğan refuses to do so. He still does not let the Kurds pray in Kurdish. He acts more like a Turkish nationalist than a Muslim.” “So you think Islam and nationalism cannot go hand in hand? Is that so?” “It is not as simple as that. Just as there is not one type of Islam there is not one type of nationalism either. Erdoğan’s nationalism is Turkish nationalism coated with Islam. That is different than secular Turkish nationalism. Things are even more complicated when you think of Kurdish nationalism. There are the secular Kurdish nationalists, and then there are the pious Kurds who might or might not embrace Kurdish nationalism. To cut it short, the relationship between Islam, ethnicity, and nationalism, especially in this country, is very complicated. The two are so entangled that it is quite hard to put the relationship between them into words.” Mele Mustafa is quite right. The relationship between Islam, ethnicity, and nationalism in Turkey is indeed quite complex, and it indeed requires an elaborate explanation. What one can be sure of, however, is the strength of ethnicity and nationalism, both on the Turkish and Kurdish fronts. The strength of nationalism among both Turkish and Kurdish Muslims is documented by my findings as well. As I have already discussed in the previous chapter, the belief in “Muslim fraternity” has only a few followers among the religious elites I have interviewed. Moreover, except for one, none of these elites is affiliated with the state. It is an interesting finding when one thinks about the AKP’s active promotion of this approach since 2002. For my part, I was expecting more religious elites to endorse the Muslim fraternity project and more state-​appointed imams to align with the official state discourse in highlighting Islam as a unifying supranational identity. However, that is not the case. Rather than the supranational religious approach, most state-​appointed Turkish imams and some non-​affiliated Turkish religious elites underline an ethno-​religious approach that combines Turkishness with Islam and prioritizes ethnicity (I will elaborate on this in Chapter 4). On the other hand, most state-​and non-​state-​appointed Kurdish imams, as well as

Muslim Kurds  79 some non-​affiliated Turkish religious elites, underline what I call a “religio-​ ethnic” approach that combines Islam with Kurdishness. Why is this so? Is it because ethnic identities are valued more than religious identities, so that even the religious elite prioritize ethnicity? Could one claim that the main reason for the weakness of supranational religious identity in Turkey is the strength of ethnic and national identities? In this chapter, I argue that, albeit true to a certain extent, such an explanation would be too superficial, and for two reasons. First, if ethnic identity were the only determining element, then we would expect Kurdish and Turkish Muslims to align with their co-​ethnics, but as revealed by interview data, the elites’ approaches are not determined specifically by ethnicity. For example, among the elites who espouse a religio-​ethnic identity are both Kurds and Turks. Second, and more important, if ethnic identity were as strong, the combination of ethnicity and religion would almost always express itself in the form of ethno-​religious identity, as could be seen among most Turkish religious elites and some Kurdish elites. However, as I will discuss in this chapter, the two sometimes come together to form a “religio-​ethnic” identity that puts more emphasis on religious identity and presents religion as the source for ethnic identity. By doing so, this approach attributes to religion more power and autonomy than the “ethno-​ religious” approach. Under the influence of the secularization thesis (Bruce 2002; Keddie 2003; Gorski and Altınordu 2008), most works on religion and ethnicity (Chong 1998; Demerath 2000; Gans 1994; Min 2010), albeit accepting the power of religion, tend to overlook this combination. In what follows, I  illustrate, with the help of interview data, the religio-​ ethnic approach as formulated by Kurdish (and some Turkish) religious elites who present Islam as the source for Kurdish (and also Turkish) ethnic identity. I demonstrate how the Kurdish elites advocating this approach employ Islam as a tool of resistance against the AKP’s attempt to use it as a tool of conflict resolution. To that aim, I specifically draw attention to the Civil Friday Prayers, and demonstrate how Kurdish imams make use of Islamic teachings to reinforce their political demands and challenge the authority of the state as well as the secular Kurdish actors. Employing a Bourdieusian field theoretical framework, I go on to suggest that this intra-​religious dispute has been possible only thanks to the removal of secular nationalists from power and the emergence of a more autonomous religious field under the AKP rule, in which several religious actors have started to contest the authenticity of others’ interpretation of Islam. I conclude the chapter with a call to more nuanced approaches regarding the relationship between religion and ethnicity as well as religion and resistance.

80  Under the Banner of Islam

“God Could Have Created Us All the Same”: Religious Roots of Ethnicity A sunny summer afternoon in Batman. Sipping my tea in the DİAY-DER office, I am listening to 90-​year-​old Mele Süleyman, who is having difficulty seeing and hearing me, as he suffers from both vision and hearing loss. He first apologizes about his Turkish, “I am not as fluent in it as I am in Kurdish and Arabic, so please excuse me if I take too long to find certain words,” he says. During the course of our conversation I would realize that this apology was not necessary, as his Turkish was quite good. Yet, he just did not feel as comfortable in Turkish as he did in Kurdish and Arabic. I respond: “Please do not apologize. Actually, I am the one who owes you an apology as I am not able to interview you in your native language.” “No worries, I am used to this,” he says. I then go on to ask him about the Civil Friday Prayers. The other meles had told me that he led many prayers. He first cites two verses in Arabic, then he translates them to Turkish: Quran 49:13 (Surat al-​Hujurat): “O mankind! We have created you from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another better”; and Qur’an 30:22 (Surat al-​Rum): “And among His Signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the difference of your languages and colors.” He continues: “As the Qur’an shows clearly, our ethnicity is innate (fıtri). One can change one’s religion but not one’s ethnicity. If God wanted, he could have created us all the same, but he didn’t.” “Why is it then that the government rejects the right to give Friday sermons in Kurdish?” I ask. “Are they not aware of these verses?” “Of course they are, but they still want us to reject our native tongue and our ethnicity. They say they are pious Muslims but they are acting against God’s will. If they call themselves Muslims then they should act like it.” Mele İbrahim, who has been listening to our conversation, agrees and cites another verse that would be recited by several other meles: “We are not ashamed to call ourselves Muslims but we are ashamed of distorted Islam. The government knows that murder is prohibited in Islam but they don’t even apologize for killing innocent Kurdish children in Roboski.1 The same 1 He’s specifically referring here to the Roboski (Uludere) Massacre that took place on December 28, 2011. Two Turkish jets fired at a group of smuggling villagers, acting on incorrect information that mistook the villagers for PKK members crossing the border; 34 civilians (17 of whom were teenagers) earning their living as smugglers were killed in the incident. The government has refused to apologize for this event since then.

Muslim Kurds  81 goes for their attitude towards Kurdish. The Qur’an says ‘we never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make (the message) clear for them’ (Surat al-​Ibrahim, 4:14). Clearly God wants us to communicate with our jamaat in our own language. Our jamaat is composed of Kurds, we are Kurds, why are we not allowed to give our sermons in Kurdish? What sort of Islam does the AKP believe in?” Although I  interviewed these meles at the beginning of my research, the way they conceptualize the relationship between Kurdish and Muslim identities is a narrative I  was to hear continuously in my later conversations. It is not that these elites prefer their ethnic identity to their religious identity. Rather, they see the former as inseparable from the latter in that it is God-​given—​their Kurdishness derives from their Muslim identity. In response to the AKP’s attempt at blurring ethnic boundaries by emphasizing membership in a broader Muslim ummah, Kurdish imams highlight their identity as “Muslim Kurds.” By disidentifying with the category they are assigned by the AKP, and splitting the category of “Muslim” into “Muslim Kurds” and “Muslim Turks,” they employ the strategy of “boundary contraction” (Wimmer 2009), which lets them draw narrower boundaries. In this, they exemplify what Aspinall calls “identity differentiation” (2007), and what Gürses calls “the Kurdification of Islam” (2015). The following quote by Mele Zekeriya, who led quite a few Civil Friday Prayers in Diyarbakır, summarizes quite succinctly why many Kurdish imams question “Muslim fraternity” as a solution: “Turkish Muslims keep saying we are religious siblings. However, in their eyes, we are siblings so long as they [the Turks] are the elder sibling.” When I ask him to elaborate this point, he responds with a question of his own: Which Islam are we talking about? The Qur’anic Islam or the oppressive Islam of the Turkish state? If we are talking about the Qur’an, it clearly indicates the existence of different ethnic groups and allows them to use their languages. However, state Islam has, for years, refused to let us pray in our own language. This is what we talk about in our sermons; we say that the Kurds are an oppressed people; they have been oppressed under secular governments, now they are being oppressed under a so-​called religious government. We say that real Islam is the solution to our problems. If this government is religious, as it claims to be, then it should allow us to give the sermons in Kurdish, since it is our innate (fıtri) right.

82  Under the Banner of Islam As this quote makes clear, in Mele Zekeriya’s mind “Muslim fraternity” is doomed to fail, as the state’s interpretation of Islamic teachings clashes with the interpretation of the same teachings by Kurdish meles. According to Mele Zekeriya, “real Muslims” should embrace their ethnic identity without any doubt, as that is what Islam asks for; in “real” Islam, religious and ethnic identities do not clash at all. Yet, Mele Zekeriya argues, in asking Kurds to privilege their religious identity the state goes against “authentic” Islamic teachings. Because most of these meles are sympathetic toward and/​or affiliated with the Kurdish movement, one could argue that it is natural for them to espouse their Kurdish identity. However, I have seen the same line of justification pursued by numerous state-​appointed imams. Davut, a state-​appointed Kurdish imam working in one of Diyarbakır’s central neighborhoods, underlined this point: We usually overlook the fact that there is the real Muslim fraternity, which advocates equality and justice for all, and there is the fake Muslim fraternity, which is nothing more than a tool to guarantee oneself status and power. Real Islam never tries to assimilate. [ . . . ]. I am Muslim, I am Kurdish. I might be black or white, male or female. I don’t have control over these things. If God wants me to be this way I have no choice but [to] obey God’s will.

Another argument one could raise here is that religious elites are divided along the lines of ethnicity. Ethnicity, undoubtedly, plays an important role in that most Kurdish elites promote the religio-​ethnic identity and most Turkish elites promote the ethno-​religious identity; yet, it still fails to account for the whole picture, as there are some Turkish religious elites who adopt the “religio-​ethnic” identity. The following quote by Mustafa, a pious Turkish politician who has taken an active role in Islamic organizations and political parties, is a good example: For a thousand years, Kurds and Turks formed an ummah that fought against the invading kuffar (sinner) armies. However, even in this unification, Kurds stayed as Kurds, Turks stayed as Turks. This is how religion should be employed; it should not be employed for assimilation purposes, as the Turkish state is so intent on doing. In the past, in Kurdish cities, the

Muslim Kurds  83 Turkish state dropped from airplanes pamphlets full of Qur’anic verses emphasizing Muslim fraternity. Did it work? No. Islam itself prohibits these types of assimilation attempts. This is why I find Kurdish Muslims’ attempt at underlining Islamic equality quite valuable and support them in their endeavor for equal rights.

Hatice, one of my two female interviewees, is in complete agreement with Mustafa. A  pious Muslim Turk, wearing a black chador, Hatice has been living in Kurdish-​majority provinces for more than 20 years and has taken an active role in human rights organizations. When I ask her about Civil Friday Prayers, she says: “Actually, this concept is not new to Muslim Turks. Because they were repressed for years under Kemalist regimes, several Muslim Turkish associations and NGOs developed the ritual of having their own Friday prayers in small groups in their own apartments and offices, free from state monitor and control. These were not mass events though. Since Muslim Turks feared the state’s rage the prayers were held without any public announcement. Only those who were in the know attended. However, when it comes to Kurds, all of a sudden, Muslim Turks find this ritual disturbing. They label Civil Friday prayers as ‘so-​called Friday prayers’ and they say that these prayers are harmful to Muslim unity. So, what has changed? Why is it that alternative, state-​free Friday prayers, which were completely acceptable when Turks had them, are deemed dangerous when Kurds organize them? I think Muslim Turks are angry at Muslim Kurds for having achieved something they have not been able to achieve themselves:  challenge the state in a public and visible way.” “As a Muslim Turk, you sound quite aware of the incoherency of such an attitude. Why do you think most Muslim Turks ignore this discrepancy? Are they not aware of it, or do they choose to turn a blind eye?” I ask. “In theory, no Muslim Turk would reject Surat-​al-​Hujurat, Surat-​al-​ Rum, and similar verses. They take pride in the universalism of Islam, and emphasize that ‘Muslims help any oppressed groups regardless of their ethnic, religious, national background.’ Yet, when it comes to practice, this discourse is shattered easily. The biggest reason for this is that the state has co-​opted Muslim Turks with the implementation of Turkish-​ Islamic policies. For example, as a Muslim Turk, you are free to campaign

84  Under the Banner of Islam for the sufferings of Muslims in other countries, such as Bosnia, Palestine, China, Syria, etc. However, you are not allowed to draw attention to the sufferings of Muslim Kurds. For a long time, the state has made sure to bracket Muslim Turks as inherently superior to Muslim Kurds, and has portrayed Kurds as the ‘uncivilized, inferior’ population, in need of ‘discipline and order.’ In such a mentality, Turks are the ‘masters’ who need to civilize ‘backwards and unruly’ Kurds. The state has also benefited from the fear of ‘division.’ Underlining that Muslim ummah calls for no borders, and that we shall all be united, it has constantly scared Muslim Turks with the idea of Kurdish separatism that will eventually divide Turkey as a Muslim country. That is why Muslim Turkish associations and NGOs prefer to talk about the sufferings of Muslims abroad rather than the ongoing clashes in the Kurdish region.” “Have you experienced any negative reactions from your friends or family when you started working as an activist in Kurdish provinces?” “I have been actively involved in Kurdish rights activism since the 80s. For years, Muslim Turks, including close friends of mine, have labeled me as Kürtçü [Kurdist/​Kurdophile, with a negative connotation]. When I  worked with Muslim Turkish NGOs in Istanbul, or in other Western cities, after becoming good friends they would tell me that they have been warned about my Kürtçü tendencies. Yet, no one calls you Çeçenci, Arapçı, Boşnakçı when you show an interest in the sufferings of Muslims in Chechnya, Palestine, or Bosnia. The irony is that, most of these people who accuse me of being Kürtçü are actually Türkçü (Turkist), but they do not even acknowledge it. The same attitude can be spotted among the members of the current government. For example, after the Roboski Massacre, where Turkish jets bombarded and killed 37 [sic] innocent Kurdish villagers, many Kurds expected the government to at least issue an apology. Yet, they did not, and this hugely disappointed Muslim Kurds. At a discursive level government members are Muslims, but in their actions they could not be further away from Islam. Their Islam is not real Islam; they would not prohibit Kurdish or ignore Roboski if they were real Muslims. Real Islam has enough space in it to include different ethnicities.”

As can be seen, these elites’ emphasis on religion as the root of ethnicity requires a much more nuanced conceptualization of the identities at hand. This is where Civil Friday Prayers become quite important.

Muslim Kurds  85

Kurdish Islam Embodied: Civil Friday Prayers An analysis of Civil Friday Prayers inevitably calls for a focus on the ideological transformation of the Kurdish movement in the early 2000s. After his arrest in 1999 and his lifetime imprisonment, the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, inspired by the ideas of socialist political theorist Murray Bookchin, wrote a book in prison, titled Democratic Confederalism. Following the publication of the book in 2004, the PKK underwent an inner transformation process, whereby it replaced its orthodox Marxist, secularist, and independence-​oriented stance with a socially liberal, democratic-​autonomy-​ oriented stance that puts emphasis on the “rights of others” (at least discursively) (Tekdemir 2018b; Yeğen 2016). In line with this new understanding, the PKK and the legal wing of the Kurdish movement started to approach groups they had previously ignored and/​or criticized. Thus began their rapprochement with Kurdish Muslims. Following this new ideological orientation (coupled with the strategic and pragmatic aim of expanding their base and their alliances to boost their legitimacy), the Kurdish movement encouraged the formation of Muslim associations sympathetic to its political cause (Sarıgil 2018: 75). This was how DİAY-DER was founded in Diyarbakır in July 2007. DİAY-DER later opened branches in several Kurdish-​majority cities as well as in İstanbul and a few other cities. This period also witnessed the formation, by the Kurdish movement, of several commissions on religious matters, such as the Commission of Peoples and Beliefs (Halklar ve İnançlar Komisyonu) established within the DTK (see Sarıgil 2018 for further details). In addition, pro-​Kurdish parties (both BDP and its successor HDP) started to include in their ranks conservative Muslim candidates (such as Altan Tan and Hüda Kaya). They also undertook mass ceremonies to commemorate important religious figures in Kurdish history. For example, in the summer of 2011, the BDP organized a commemoration ceremony for Sheikh Said in Diyarbakır on the anniversary of his execution. Similarly, in 2014, the DTK organized a mass gathering (mawlid) to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Prophet Muhammad. (This could be seen as a strategic move on the part of the Kurdish movement as the Hizbullah had already organized two mawlids in Diyarbakır, in 2011 and 2012, and attracted hundreds of thousands of participants.) Acting on a call by Öcalan, the DTK also organized, in 2013 and 2014, two Democratic Islam Congresses in Diyarbakır and Hagen (Germany), respectively (see the Introduction). It

86  Under the Banner of Islam was in such an atmosphere that the DİAY-DER initiated the Civil Friday Prayers (in 2011). In the wake of the Civil Friday Prayers, many observers believed that these prayers were orchestrated by the PKK. Hence, they thought of the prayers as staged mise en scenes or an uneasy alliance between Marxism and Islam in which the former exploits the latter for its own gains. Seyda Hamid, a short, bearded imam in his seventies, dressed in traditional attire—​an imam’s garb and a taqiyah on his head—​tells me a different story: “We were attending a protest in front of the [HDP-​affiliated] Democratic Society Congress (DTK) along with some politicians. What do they call that protest? ‘Civil something’ . . . They call it ‘civil disobedience’ I guess?” Looks at me for confirmation; I nod. He continues: “Whatever. . . . We were attending that disobedience protest. There was this tent in front of the building and I  and three other imam friends were there. It was a Friday and when we heard the call to prayer (ezan) we said ‘We have to leave. It’s time for prayer. We need to go the mosque.’ However, it turned out that the police had blocked the road because of the protest and they were not letting anyone through. In addition to the imams, there were also other jamaat members there and after debating it shortly we decided to pray right there, in front of the tent. We knew that the police could arrest us but we were not afraid. Currently most of our Kurdish intellectuals are in prison because of KCK trials. Hence, we said ‘no matter what, we are going to pray here in the street.’ We were sure that the police would arrest us right after the prayer. I was the oldest one among the imams so I led the prayer. Then, the following week it spread to İstanbul, and to other cities in the Southeast and East.” “So, it was not planned in advance?” I ask. “No, definitely not. It developed quite spontaneously.” “I’m asking this because as you might know government members and some Kurdish Muslims think that these prayers are only strategic and not sincere. They think the PKK and the BDP are using you for their own purposes.” He sighs and then goes on to say: “They accuse us of negative nationalism, of racism! We pay special attention to the content of our sermons; we try to make sure that we’re talking about the ummah, the mankind in general. In reality, what we are trying to do is to show how Islamic perspective can help solve this problem. For example, in my sermon today I talked about

Muslim Kurds  87 the conflict between Qur’anic Islam and human (beşeri) Islam. If we were to apply the rules of Qur’anic Islam we would not be experiencing these problems. Qur’an prohibits the killing of innocent people. But, look how many innocent Kurdish and Turkish children died in this war. We are not members of a particular group. We are only siding with those who have been exposed to injustice. We are fighting against injustice.” Try as the imams might to pay attention to the content of their sermons so that the state won’t deem them harmful, Civil Friday Prayers have caused a big uproar among the government circles as they have challenged state policies that envision Islam as a supranational identity for both Kurds and Turks. In a speech he made in Diyarbakır on June 1, 2011, Erdoğan accused the organizers of these prayers of “schism” and “factionalism”: Recently they have invented a new tradition: they claim that it is not allowable to pray behind state-​appointed imams. My brothers, I’m telling you, these people have nothing to do with Islam. [ . . . ] What they are doing is just schism! You know, they actually aren’t even Muslims. They themselves [alluding to BDP] declared that Kurds are Zoroastrians [alluding to Kurds’ pre-​Islamic religious belief]! My Kurdish brothers of course do not accept this but this is what BDP claims. And according to them Apo [Öcalan] is a prophet. How dare you organize these prayers! Their sole aim is to get a few more votes, that’s why they choose this path and try to deceive my brothers! [ . . . ] One of them even says “we are going to take hold of the mosques!” What nonsense! How dare you say this? But, we’re going to give them their lesson in June elections. [ . . . ] These are a “gang,” they are thugs, they are terrorists!2

Erdoğan was clearly angry. However, Erdoğan and the AKP politicians were not the only ones who believed that the BDP was the mastermind behind these prayers. Most state-​imams I talked to also thought the same. Building on the argument that the Marxist, secular worldview and religion cannot coexist, these prayers were seen as tools of manipulation used by the PKK and BDP/​HDP. Osman, a state-​appointed imam, claimed that “these prayers are completely ideological. Islam does not accept the categorization of mosques

2 Erdoğan’s election campaign speech in Diyarbakır, June 1, 2011, http://​www.akparti.org.tr/​ site/​haberler/​1-​haziran-​diyarbakır-​mitingi-​konusmasinin-​tam-​metni/​8230 (retrievedSeptember 30, 2013).

88  Under the Banner of Islam into ‘Kurdish mosques’ vs. ‘Turkish mosques.’ All mosques belong to Allah, they are property of the public, they don’t belong to the state or the Kurds or the Turks. It is problematic to label them as such. It is dangerous to insert ‘ideology’ into mosques. You need to keep ideology away from mosques.” This same idea was also voiced by Sami, another state-​appointed imam who conducts prayers in one of the biggest mosques of Diyarbakır: I agree that imams should be able to give the sermons in Kurdish but I also think that this should evolve organically as a public demand. These DTP members [referring to the BDP; DTP is the name of one of the earlier Kurdish parties closed by the Constitutional Court] don’t even know how to pray, they don’t normally go to the mosque, they have nothing to do with Friday prayers! They even renamed the Friday prayer as “civil disobedience”! Why are you abusing my prayer for your own politics? Then they changed the name and started to call it Civil Prayer; but our prayers are also “civil.” Is this Friday prayer any different than ours? Look, I believe that if this had started as a truly public demand then there would have been much more people attending these prayers. Now people call these prayers “the DTP Prayers.”

The meles who led and participated in Civil Friday Prayers were indeed encouraged and supported by the Kurdish movement and were under the influence of the BDP/​HDP. Yet, they still managed to develop a theological resistance against state Islam. By drawing on Qur’anic verses and hadith they criticized the state’s promotion of Muslim fraternity as “the solution,” and through Friday sermons they drew attention to the Islamic equality between different ethnic groups. To justify their support for the Kurdish movement, numerous Kurdish meles referred to Prophet Muhammad’s last sermon, as well as the Qur’anic verses al-​Hujurat and al-​Rum. Building on these verses, Mele Bayram, a well-​ respected, elderly mele in Batman, told me: “God tells us that he’s created Adam from soil. That soil was multi-​colored. It had in it white soil as well as red, yellow, and black. This shows us why human beings are created in different colors; it is because God deemed it so. The same goes for our languages. God says that he only sent prophets to certain tribes provided that they speak the language of that tribe; whatever a language a group speaks their prophet also speaks that language, be it Turkish, Arabic, or Kurdish [he’s referring here to Surat al-​Ibrahim,

Muslim Kurds  89 4:14]. Which is to say, we are not against state-​appointed imams or state mosques per se, we just want our people to be able to understand what we are saying, which is also what God wants. Our jamaat is almost 99% Kurds, and they understand our Kurdish sermon better than the Turkish sermon of the Diyanet. It is much easier for me to give a sermon in Kurdish. When I give a sermon in Turkish I ask the jamaat if they understand what I am saying; most of them say they don’t.” At this point, Mele Seyfettin, intervenes and “clarifies” Mele Bayram’s explanation for me: “He is not too proficient in Turkish but all in all Seyda Bayram is trying to say that if problems between Muslims were solved according to the Qur’an, then there would be no trouble at all; if everyone were to follow the Qur’anic orders then Friday prayers would be conducted in peace, without any need for quarrel. Yet the government refuses to follow the Qur’an! They send undercover police officers to record our prayers. I once asked them [the officers], ‘aren’t you Muslims?’ to which they responded, ‘of course we are; how can you think otherwise?’ ‘If you are Muslims why are you not praying during the Friday prayer, you’ve been recording our prayers for almost a year now and not once have I seen you praying, what kind of Muslims are you?’ The government accuses us of being Zoroastrians, of not being real imams. We employ in our sermons Qur’anic verses and genuine hadith; I’ve continuously asked the state imams to come attend our prayers and correct us if we say something wrong. Islam does not only belong to Turks, it also belongs to Kurds! Minister of Interior [Bülent Arınç, at the time] has recently declared that ‘Kurdish is not a language of civilization.’ Who is he to judge? Has he received a revelation on this? God has clearly said that he has created several languages, has He added in parentheses that ‘Turkish is the language of civilization’? In short, government Islam is not real Islam, it is not the Islam of the Qur’an.” The third imam in the room, Mele Selahaddin, who is younger than the other two, nods and joins the conversation: “The government sees us as mouthpieces of the BDP, yet, that is not the case. We did not ask for permission from the BDP or the AKP or the CHP in starting these prayers. They were organically initiated in Diyarbakır from where they

90  Under the Banner of Islam jumped to Hakkari and then we followed suit. Now they have jailed an imam friend of ours. How is this fair? Is praying a bad thing? [Pointing to Mele Bayram] He’s an imam, just like his father and his grandfather; we all come from alim [learned] families. The police tell us ‘your grandpa is an imam, your dad is an imam, you are an imam, why have you gotten involved in the Civil Friday Prayers?’ They think these prayers are only politically motivated. Yet, in reality, we are only demanding what Islam promises to us. When it comes to Kurds they [the government] cease to be Muslims.”

Adem, a state-​appointed Kurdish imam in Diyarbakır, agrees: “God tells us very clearly that he has created all people equal and that everyone should act according to His rules. Yet, he means this in a unifying way, in the sense that regardless of their race, religion, language, gender, people should be united in God. Plus, God has created these differences as a way of identifying people, to make them think further about ‘others,’ as it is put in Surat al-​Rum; not to trigger clashes. However, we, Muslims, fall into the trap of deeming these physical attributes as sources of superiority and end up strangling each other even though God has prohibited this. In Surat al-​Anfal he warns Muslims against internal schisms when he says ‘if you [Muslims] do not become allies then there will be fitnah (distress) on earth and great corruption’ (Qur’an 8: 73). Why do we experience so much persecution if both Turks and Kurds are Muslims? Several Muslim scholars have written on internal schisms but the rulers prevented these works from reaching out to wider audiences. Most Muslim-​majority countries today are monarchies where rulers interpret Islam in the way they want. Unfortunately, even though we are a democracy, our rulers, too, interpret Islam as it suits them.” As is clear, what these meles did was to challenge the government religiously, based on their theological knowledge. By asking the state to act in accordance with Islamic teachings and trying to hold the government accountable for its religious claims, they reinforced the legitimacy of the Civil Friday Prayers which were politically deemed suspicious because of their close connection with the BDP. While almost all the state-​imams I talked to disapproved of the Civil Friday Prayers, they all agreed with the meles’ demand for Kurdish sermons, especially when reminded of the Quran’ic verses on the subject. As such, the Qur’an gave the meles religious leverage in the face of political

Muslim Kurds  91 accusations and provided them with the opportunity to fight “assimilation” with religion. In the following section I employ Bourdieu’s field theory to analyze further the power dynamics at play in this complex narrative.

Turkey’s Religious Field in the 2000s:  A Bourdieusian Analysis Pierre Bourdieu’s work has been of great influence in numerous subfields of sociology in recent decades. While Bourdieu’s work, in general, is informed by the study of religion, especially by the writings of Weber and Durkheim, as well as those of Mauss, it is only since the early 2000s that sociologists of religion have started employing Bourdieusian framework in their analyses (Dianteill 2003; Dillon 2001; Flanagan 2008; Verter 2003). One of the main reasons beyond this unwillingness has been the criticism that his analysis of religion is very much an analysis of French Catholicism and is quite difficult to transfer to the studies of other religious traditions. While true to a certain extent (see McKinnon et al. 2011 for a response to this criticism), as I will show in the following, Bourdieu’s field theory is a quite suitable theoretical tool even in analyzing a case that is quite far from French Catholicism: Turkish and Kurdish Sunni Islam. According to Bourdieu, a field is mostly defined by power relations between numerous agents occupying different positions with varying capitals. While he does not provide a concise definition, the following passage, featured in a coauthored book with Wacquant, sums up the main components of the field: A field is simultaneously a space of conflict and competition, the analogy here being with a battlefield, in which participants vie to establish monopoly over the species of capital effective in it—​cultural authority in the artistic field, scientific authority in the scientific field, sacerdotal authority in the religious field, and so forth—​and the power to decree the hierarchy and “conversion rates” between all forms of authority in the field of power. In the course of these struggles, the very shape and divisions of the field become a central stake, because to alter the distribution and relative weight of forms of capital is tantamount to modifying the structure of the field. (1992: 17–​18)

92  Under the Banner of Islam In such an understanding, each field can be thought of as “a ‘game,’ in which ‘players’ fight according to specific rules for a specific ‘stake,’ which appears to them ‘worth’ the time and energy that have to be invested in the competition” (Schultheis 2008: 35). In any field, actors vie for legitimate authority and try to implement a hierarchical structure that prioritizes their products. In this, the field is like a marketplace where different actors produce symbolic goods and services aimed at their customers. Consumers provide actors with legitimacy in return for their products and services, which increases competition in the field. To reduce such competition, actors try to establish monopoly over products and become involved in a constant battle to exclude other actors. When translated into the religious field, such competition usually takes place over “the monopoly over the administration of the goods of salvation and over the legitimate exercise of religious power [ . . . ] to modify the representations and practices of laypersons by inculcating them in a religious habitus” (Bourdieu 1991: 22). Central to this process is the relationship between religious demand (religious interests of various groups or classes of laity) and religious supply (religious services, whether orthodox or heretical). Building his narrative on Weber’s account of the interaction between religious professionals (the priest, the prophet, and the sorcerer), Bourdieu claims that we can only speak of the religious field with the emergence of a group of religious actors with varying levels of religious capital who monopolize religious knowledge to the exclusion of laity (a distinction Bourdieu traces to the Durkheimian distinction between the sacred and the profane). In Bourdieu’s narrative, the Roman Catholic Church maintains the monopoly of ways of salvation and the priests maintain a sacerdotal monopoly, where they are the only authorities to hold baptism, marriage, and ordination ceremonies (McKinnon et al. 2011). Islam differs from Catholicism in that it does not have a centralized institution such as the Roman Catholic Church, which could claim total monopoly over religious products and services. “The community of the faithful is not, in theory, internally differentiated into a lay society and the body of extraspecially faithful” (Gellner 1981: 48; cited in Reddig 2011: 160). Because Islam has no concept of priesthood, the believers (conceptualized as the ummah) are expected to have as much control over religious products and services as religious professionals. In the absence of priests who convey God’s words to the laity, the latter are deemed to have as much religious capital and knowledge.

Muslim Kurds  93 However, in reality, Islam also has its own religious experts, called the ulama (the learned ones) (see Zaman 2002 and Kuru 2019 for a comprehensive analysis of the Muslim ulama). They “claim the legitimate religious authority to lead the ummah on ‘the straight path to God’ and determine the authoritative concepts of orthodoxy (the correct interpretation of faith) and orthopraxy (the correct interpretation of rituals)” (Reddig 2011: 160). Among the ulama are the representatives of Sunni Islam’s four schools of law:  Hanafi, Shafi’i, Maliki, and Hanbali. These four schools of jurisprudence largely monopolize religious knowledge production in the field of Islam. Although they are regarded equally as orthodox, the Hanafi school has the biggest number of followers (about one-​third of Muslims adhere to the Hanafi school of law). The ulama earn their legitimacy via the mastery of usul-​al-​fiqh, the body of principles and investigative methodologies used to interpret and deduce rules from the Qur’an, the Sunnah (reports about the sayings and actions of Prophet Muhammad), and other religious sources. Shari‘a, as the divine Islamic law, is considered infallible, whereas fiqh, as the human attempt to understand shari‘a, is considered fallible and debatable. Because shari‘a is not based on a written set of rules (after all, the Qur’an is not a book of law) the ulama’s role as the jurists in charge of certain rulings about issues not covered in the Qur’an set them clearly apart from the laity and establish them as the authorities in the field. Yet, the demarcation of clear boundaries between the laity and religious experts constitute only one aspect of the power struggles in the religious field of Islam. What is more crucial, especially for this book’s purposes, is the competition between the ulama themselves. As put by Bourdieu, “religious field is coextensive with the field of the relations of competition at the very center of the church” characterized by “rivalries for spiritual authority” (1991: 26). I argue that the theological debates that arose in the wake of the Civil Friday Prayers exemplify this competition very well. As demonstrated in the first part of this chapter, what we see in this debate is religious scholars challenging the state’s interpretation of Islam by way of Qur’anic verses and Sunnah (especially the hadith). Accusations of “this is not real Islam” and “they [the government] are not real Muslims” display very clearly that at the heart of this discussion lays the question of who has the legitimate religious authority to interpret the faith correctly and whose interpretation is more authentic. Similarly, Erdoğan’s portrayal of BDP-​affiliated Muslim Kurds as well as the Civil Friday Prayer imams as “Zoroastrians” can be read in the same light. In October 2011, when the BDP lawmakers in the parliament

94  Under the Banner of Islam presented a bill asking that the headscarf ban be abolished, Erdoğan’s “accusation” of Zoroastrianism extended to them:  “Why would Zoroastrians care about the Islamic headscarf? Why do you abuse my headscarf-​wearing fellow sisters?”3 he said. By highlighting the Kurds’ pre-​Islamic Zoroastrian roots and using it as an “accusation,” Erdoğan not only excludes some Kurds from the field of Islam (by declaring them non-​Muslims), but also portrays the AKP and the state as the legitimate religious authorities and the sole representatives of “true Islam.” At this point, Bourdieu’s emphasis on the opposition between orthodoxy and heresy comes in quite handy. According to Bourdieu, “the heretical contestation of the church threatens the very existence of the ecclesiastical institution when it questions not only the priestly body to fulfill its proclaimed function but also the raison d’être of the priesthood” (1991: 25). Especially when the church holds total monopoly, the opposition between orthodoxy and heresy unfolds as either “a conflict for strictly religious authority between the specialists” or “conflict for power within the church. [ . . . ] This takes the form of heresy, when, in a crisis situation, contestation of the ecclesiastical monopoly by a fraction of the clergy encounters the anticlerical interests of a fraction of the laity and leads to contestation of ecclesiastical monopoly as such” (Bourdieu 1991: 26). In the light of this distinction, one can claim that Civil Friday Prayers were deemed as threatening by the government exactly because they led the way for the formation of a “heretical” movement, comprising a fraction of the laity (oppositional Muslim Kurds) as well as a fraction of the clergy (Kurdish imams, meles, seydas). Despite the lack of a centralized church, what makes possible the application of Bourdieu’s theory to the field of Islam in Turkey is the existence of the Diyanet as the sole religious authority. Established in 1924 as an administrative unit directly tied to the Prime Ministry, the Diyanet is tasked with “executing the works concerning the beliefs, worship, and ethics of Islam, enlightening the public about their religion, and administering places of worship.”4 It is responsible for appointing, dismissing, and training “all imams (preachers), hatibs (orators), vaizes (preachers) [ . . . ] and muezzins (callers to prayer)” in Turkey (Davison 2003). Until July 2018, when the Office of the Presidency took over its control, its budget was approved annually by the 3 “Dini Zerdüştlük olanin böyle bir derdi olabilir mi?” http://​www.milliyet.com.tr/​-​dini-​ zerdustluk-​olanin-​boyle-​bir-​derdi-​olabilir-​mi-​-​siyaset-​1451167/​ (retrievedJanuary 4, 2019). 4 Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı, Kuruluş ve Görevleri Hakkında Kanun [Law on the Directorate of Religious Affairs, Its Foundation and Tasks]: http://​www.mevzuat.gov.tr/​MevzuatMetin/​1.5.633.pdf

Muslim Kurds  95 Turkish parliament and its president was appointed by the prime minister (Gözaydın 2008). The establishment of the Diyanet, from the very beginning, created an inherent paradox in which “the modern, secular Turkish state,” in its attempt to maintain the separation of religious and political fields, ended up becoming more involved in the religious sphere. Under the new republic, especially following the abolishment of the Caliphate and the Sheikh-​al Islam, Turkey no longer had an established state religion, but in order to ensure strict state control over religion it still felt the need to establish an institution regulating Islam. Especially when considered in combination with a 1925 law that closed down religious orders, convents, and dervish lodges in the country, it becomes clear that through the Diyanet, the state aimed to put an end to the autonomy of religious elites, and to ensure that its own interpretation of Islam would become the dominant one (Hanioğlu 2012). Article 136 of the Turkish constitution illustrates this paradox quite clearly when it talks about how the Diyanet carries out its tasks “in compliance with laiklik (laïcité, secularism).”5 According to Keyman, laiklik is key to understanding this paradox, as it is “a concept that indicates not only ‘the official disestablishment of religion from the state,’ but also ‘the constitutional control of religious affairs by the state’ ” (2007: 222). As such, since its inception, the Turkish model of secularism—​laiklik—​has come to mean not only the separation of religion and politics, but also their merger. Despite the characterization, by scholars like Ahmet Kuru (2009) and Hakan Yavuz (2009), of Turkish laiklik as an anti-​religious ideology, the very existence of the Diyanet itself is testimony to the Turkish state’s deep involvement in religion. As displayed by Hanioğlu (2012), through the Diyanet, the state not only funded but also propagated a distinct understanding of Islam: an Islam that is “anti-​clerical, Sunni-​Hanafi, Turkish, progressive and rational.” For Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Republican cadres, Diyanet was the main institutional component of what they envisioned as an Islamic Reformation that would help make Islam more accessible for the masses. Rather than wiping religion off the public sphere, the Kemalists opted to use the Diyanet as a tool to redefine Islam (Lord 2018). Over the years, the ideology of the Diyanet morphed in line with the ideology of the ruling government at the time, but its task of “controlling religion” has not changed (see Gözaydın 2009 for pre-​AKP Diyanet, and Mutluer 2018 and Öztürk 2016 5 http://​www.turkhukuksitesi.com/​mevzuat.php?mid=5624

96  Under the Banner of Islam for Diyanet under the AKP rule). Throughout the history of the Republic, various religious orders and NGOs have challenged the Diyanet’s interpretation of Islam. However, during the AKP rule, these challenges took a visibly theological form. With the rise of the AKP and the prioritization of religious identity emerged a relatively autonomous religious field whereby the criticism of the Diyanet increasingly started to take the shape of an intra-​ religious, theological conflict, rather than “reactionary religious criticism” against a secularizing state institute. Yet, Civil Friday Prayer imams and the AKP were not the only actors in this newly emerging religious field. Other Muslim actors accompanied them in the ongoing contestation over legitimate religious authority. The abolishment of the state of emergency in 2002, the EU-​oriented AKP reforms, the decreasing power of the military in the Kurdish region, as well as the Kurdish movement’s changing stance toward Islam, led to the flourishing of a more lively civil society in Kurdish-​majority provinces. Groups other than the PKK and the BDP/​HDP started to raise their voices as to the “Kurdish problem,” leading to the construction of “many Kurdishnesses” (Tekdemir 2018a). The most vocal among these groups have been Kurdish Muslims, who had differing affiliations. Even before the AKP’s ascent to office, several Muslim groups, with varying ideologies, dominated the region (see Tekdemir 2018b for a detailed overview). In addition to the armed Kurdish Hizbullah (see Chapter 1) and its civil branch, Mustazaf-​Der (closed by a court order in 2012), there existed unarmed Kurdish Islamist groups, such as the more statist Sufi religious tarikats (Naqshbandis and Qadiris), pro-​Kurdish Nurcu (followers of Kurdish Muslim scholar Said-​i Nursi) groups like Zehra and Med-​Zehra, as well as some traditional Kurdish madrasas, and branches of İstanbul-​ originating religious NGOs, like the Salafist Association for the Freedom of Thought and Educational Rights (Özgür-​Der). However, it was only during the AKP rule, with religious identity gaining more traction, and the reforms giving way to a pluralist political environment, that these groups became more visible and vocal publicly. For example, in 2012, the Association of Human Rights and Solidarity for the Oppressed (Mazlum-​Der), a civil society organization founded in 1991 by Sunni Muslim religious elites, held its second Kurdish Forum (20 years after the first one) in Bursa, a Western Anatolian province, with Sunni Muslim Turkish and Kurdish religious elites in attendance. The Forum’s proceedings emphasized that “Muslim Fraternity requires equality and justice” and “Kurds are equal members of the Muslim

Muslim Kurds  97 Table 3.1  Changes in Religious and Political Fields in Turkey between 2002 and 2015 Genesis of an Autonomous Religious Field

Changes between Fields

Changes within Fields

Weakening grip of secular Blurring borders between Internal dispute between state political and religious fields Kurdish and Turkish religious elites Increasing autonomy of Imams making political Competition over the local religious authorities claims (e.g., Civil Friday “authentic” Islamic Prayers) conceptualization of ethnicity

ummah.”6 Similarly, in 2012, a new Kurdish Muslim group, Azadî İnsiyatifi, emerged, and the Kurdish Hizbullah established a political party, called the Hür-​Dava Partisi (Free Cause Party). Table 3.1 summarizes these changes through a field-​theoretical lens.

Islam as a Tool of Resistance In his seminal work Genealogies of Religion, Talal Asad writes that the Friday sermon (khutba) is the most important form in which the Islamic tradition of open, institutionalized public criticism finds expression (1993: 213). Similarly, Butt (2016) notes the importance of Friday prayers in aiding collective mobilization by triggering a type of “street power.” As such, it was no surprise that the state considered the Civil Friday Prayers a threat to its authority. Not only did they provide a space for public criticism of the state, but also framed (Snow et al. 1986) that criticism as religious, which forced the state to take this criticism seriously. In December 2011, a few months after the emergence of the Civil Friday Prayers, the Diyanet revealed its “mele project” which envisioned the hiring of 1,000 meles from the Kurdish region as “state imams,” after giving them a six-​month intensive course (state imams are normally trained in secondary education institutions called the imam hatip schools). While some Kurdish Muslims lauded this initiative as restoring the honor of Kurdish meles and 6 See Mazlum-​Der İkinci Kürt Forumu, 17–​18 Kasım 2012, İznik, Bursa (Ankara: Mazlum-​Der,  2013).

98  Under the Banner of Islam the (now illegal) Kurdish madrasas, some deemed it as yet another step in the assimilation of Kurds. The latter group, mostly comprising BDP/​HDP circles, accused the government of using the power of religion in repressing Kurdish identity. Responding to this initiative via his Twitter account, Selahattin Demirtaş, then co-​chair of BDP, said: “the ‘mele project’ displays clearly that the state understands the ‘Kurdish problem’ as ‘Kurds as trouble-​makers.’ The ‘mele project’ is nothing but a reflection of this understanding. In reality, it’s the state that causes trouble. I am not against the hiring of those meles but I hope they manage to tame the state, rather than vice versa. That will be much more effective!”7 This same concern was also expressed to me by a BDP member in Diyarbakır. A  retired imam, he criticized the mele project in the following words: I see this as the last step of a smear campaign against Kurds. The state has, for years, portrayed Kurds as atheists, as kafirs, as communists and succeeded in convincing the Turks about this. However, these Friday Prayers shattered this discourse. The Turkish public started thinking, ‘Wait a second! These people are attending Friday prayers, and in big numbers. They are practicing Muslims, just like us.’ Its accusations now confuted, the state started denigrating these prayers as ‘fake,’ as ‘anti-​Islamic.’ Having seen that the prayers were still going on, they resorted to a new solution: trying to divide Kurdish Islam from inside. This ‘mele project’ is only aimed towards that and nothing more.

When read in the light of Bourdieu’s emphasis on the church’s authority to decide all appointments, promotions, and careers, and the codification of the rules regulating professional activity (1991:  24) the “mele project” demonstrates why the Diyanet could still be considered on par with the Roman Catholic Church in Bourdieu’s account, despite the clear differences between the two. By the time the prayers ended in 2013, the state started making some changes in its policy regarding Friday prayers. In my last visit to Diyarbakır, in June 2013, I was told, both by state imams and local meles, that the Diyanet had sent inspectors to the region to inquire about the meles’ demands for 7 http://​www.silvanmucadele.com/​news_​detail.php?id=7699&uniq_​id=1381139100 October 1, 2013). Selahattin Demirtaş tweeted this on December 16, 2011.

(retrieved

Muslim Kurds  99 Kurdish sermons and these inspectors apparently told the imams that they were allowed to give the Friday sermons in Kurdish, at least in rural areas. “It still is not official but at least they are now less hostile to the idea. A few weeks ago someone had complained to the police about the Kurdish sermon a friend of ours gave but the mufti (the highest Diyanet-​appointed religious authority in a city) intervened on behalf of our friend and told the police that the state and the Diyanet are not disturbed by the Kurdish sermons and that all charges against our friend should be dropped,” said Mele Zekeriya. This policy change becomes more meaningful when considered together with another important change the Diyanet implemented in 2006, namely the decentralization of Friday sermons and the transfer of authority to the muftis in writing the sermons (with the caveat that the Diyanet could still prepare the sermon if it willed so).8 Before this change, the Diyanet centrally wrote and sent Friday sermons to all the mosques in Turkey (for details see Ongur 2020, Saçmalı 2013, Tepe 2016, Yaşaroğlu 2016). As such, it could be claimed that even though the AKP still tried to impose on the public its own version of Turkish-​Sunni Islam and even though the state still maintained its control over religion via the Diyanet, Kurdish imams and muftis enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy, at least for a short period of time.9 The centralization following the coup attempt in July 2016 put an end to this relative autonomy. In September 2016, in a circular letter titled “July 15, 2016,” the Diyanet asked that “due attention be paid to reading verbatim the centrally prepared sermons in mosques on Fridays.”10 In the same vein, the DİAYDER, along with many other NGOs, was closed in November 2016 with an emergency decree. In their comprehensive study on nonviolent campaigns, Stephan and Chenoweth write, “major nonviolent campaigns worldwide have achieved success 53  percent of the time, compared with 26  percent for violent resistance campaigns” (2008: 8). It could be claimed that Civil Friday Prayers

8 “Hutbeleri müftülükler hazırlayacak,” Hürriyet, June 21, 2006, http://​www.hurriyet.com.tr/​ hutbeleri-​muftulukler-​hazirlayacak-​4620613 (retrieved February 11, 2016). 9 In 2013, city-​level Spiritual Guidance Committees (İl İrşad Kurulları) replaced city-​level Sermon Commissions (İl Hutbe Komisyonları) in preparing the Friday sermons. See the note on this change in Diyanet’s end of the year report in 2013 (p.  30):  https://​www2.diyanet.gov.tr/​ DinHizmetleriGenelMudurlugu/​R aporlar/​2 013%20Din%20Hizmetleri%20Raporu.pdf. In an email correspondence dated September 18, 2020, a Diyanet employee told me that “sermons are prepared by the Diyanet and sent to the muftis since 2011.” However, I have found no official document confirming this information. 10 See the full text at https://​ hukukmusavirligi.diyanet.gov.tr/​ Documents/​ 15%20Temmuz%20 2016%20Genelgesi.pdf (retrieved September 15, 2020).

100  Under the Banner of Islam exemplify this argument to a certain extent. This was the first time that the AKP had to face nonviolent religious resistance in Kurdish-​majority cities, and as a self-​defined religious government it had to take this challenge seriously. Hence, these prayers and these clerics showed that religion is not only a double-​edged tool that can generate resistance as well as repression, but it is also a quite efficient one when used in nonviolent resistance. However, it would still be a mistake to define the Civil Friday Prayers as an example of “Islamic liberation theology” (Dabashi 2008) or an “everyday form of resistance” (Scott 1985), as they fit neither category. They were more a form of resistance that stood between the two—​less than an instance of liberation theology and more than an everyday form of resistance. They resembled liberation theology in that the Kurdish meles, just like the Catholic clergymen, emphasized the need to fight with injustice, but unlike liberation theologians they did not attempt to change the whole system. They also resembled an everyday form of resistance in that religion was used as an “ordinary weapon of a relatively powerless group” (Scott 1985: xvi), but in contrast to Scott’s peasants who are powerless and who “typically avoid any direct, symbolic confrontation with authority” (1985: xvi) the meles were very actively involved in direct confrontation with the state (to the extent that they were even jailed). What this case then shows us is that in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict, in addition to its role as an assimilative unifying identity, religion also acted as a tool of resistance. The elite alliance (De Juan 2008) they formed with the BDP/​HDP made it possible for Kurdish meles to gain more strength and visibility. The existence of a religious government further helped them, as they could theologically challenge it and force the government representatives to bring about change based on religious teachings. By doing so, they managed to transform Islam from a tool of assimilation into a tool of resistance. If one reason for the failure of the AKP’s “Muslim fraternity” project was this resistance by Muslim Kurds and their emphasis on Kurdish identity as a God-​given identity, another equally vital reason was the strength of ethnic identity and Turkish nationalism among Turkish Muslims. The next chapter focuses on this latter factor through interviews with Sunni Turkish religious elites, accompanied by a detailed historical look at the Turkish Republic’s paradoxical relationship with Islam, especially at the roots and the development of the Turkish-​Islamic synthesis.

4 “Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”: The Case for Ethno-​Religious Identity In a grandiose new mosque in the suburbs of İstanbul, I am interviewing Tahsin Hoca, a state-​appointed Turkish imam. Just like other imams I talked with, Tahsin Hoca is a talkative man who tends to give verbose answers to my relatively short questions. By now I am used to these lengthy answers; imams are used to “preaching” even when they are not on duty. However, this time, I am finding it quite difficult to focus, as my mind is still occupied with the sheer contrast between the overall poverty of the neighborhood and the ostentation of the mosque we are in. As it stands, the mosque is a testimony to the increasing budget of the Diyanet under the AKP rule, which has peaked in 2019 at 10.5 billion Turkish liras,1 surpassing the budgets of several other ministries, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Science, Industry, and Technology, and the Ministry of Culture. While in 2012, the real increase in Diyanet’s budget, with respect to 2002, was 176%, between 2006 and 2019 the Diyanet’s budget grew more than tenfold (see Mutluer 2014, and Öztürk and Sözeri 2018 for further details). Trying to gather my thoughts and focus on my research question, I ask Tahsin Hoca about the relationship between nationalism and Islam. He responds: Racism in Islam is associated with the jahiliyya (ignorance) period and that’s why it is strongly prohibited. In the past, there was a strong current of Turkish nationalism in this country. This, in Islam, is called negative nationalism (menfi milliyetçilik). The same thing with Kurdish nationalism: it is menfi and is against the nature of Islam. The only nationalism Islam

1 “Bütçesiyle bazı bakanlıkları geride bırakan Diyanet, gayrimenkul zengini olmuş”, T24, September 16, 2019, https://​t24.com.tr/​haber/​butcesiyle-​bazi-​bakanliklari-​geride-​birakan-​diyanet-​ gayrimenkul-​zengini-​olmus,839612 (retrieved September 25, 2019).

Under the Banner of Islam. Gülay Türkmen, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197511817.003.0005.

102  Under the Banner of Islam accepts is müspet milliyetçilik (positive nationalism), which emphasizes the fraternity of all Muslims. It sees all Muslims as equal and does not distinguish between them. Hence, what we need to do is to establish a Muslim Union. Look at the European Union, why shall we not do something similar? The question is: which country can establish and lead such a union? None of the Arab states can do it. Indonesia, Iran or Pakistan can’t do it either. . . . Only Turks can accomplish this. Because, they successfully ruled the Muslim world for 600 years [alluding to the Ottoman Empire].

Tahsin Hoca’s answer embodies perfectly what I call the ethno-​religious approach to ethnic and religious identity formation. He starts his answer with an emphasis on the fraternity of Kurdish and Turkish Muslims and condemns both Kurdish and Turkish nationalisms. However, as he goes along, in complete contrast to what he said earlier, he starts portraying the Turks as superior to not only the Kurds but also various other Muslim nations. He is not alone in this paradoxical stance. Most state-​appointed Turkish imams, as well as some Turkish Muslim elites (especially those affiliated with the Gülen2 and Menzil religious orders), think like Tahsin Hoca. They employ an ethno-​religious approach, which seemingly prioritizes an overarching Muslim identity but in reality privileges Turkish identity over Kurdish (and Muslim) identity. These elites see ethnicity and religion as separate entities and emphasize Islam as an umbrella identity that could unite Kurds and Turks. They focus on the Qur’anic difference between negative (menfi) and positive (müspet) nationalisms and claim that most of the Kurdish imams practice negative nationalism, which is forbidden in Islamic teachings. To display this in detail, they usually refer to Qur’anic verses that emphasize the fraternity of Muslims and accuse the Kurdish imams of dividing the Muslim ummah. In this, they sound like they advocate a supranational, overarching 2 Established in 1970s by Fethullah Gülen, a preacher who has been in self-​exile in the United States since 1999 (due to charges of engaging in anti-​secular activities), the Gülen movement used to be the largest religious network in Turkey, with strong grassroots support and a significant amount of financial resources. Called Hizmet (Service) by its followers, Cemaat (Jamaat) by some journalists and researchers, and Fethullah Terör Örgütü (Fethullah Terrorist Organization), FETÖ, by the government, the movement follows the teachings of Said-​i Nursi, a Kurdish Sunni Muslim theologian who lived at the turn of the twentieth century. Between 2002 and 2012 they allied with the AKP to facilitate the latter’s takeover of key political institutions and repression of dissent. At the time, the movement was accused of and criticized for using wiretapping, blackmail, and fraud in eliminating rivals. The alliance started to crack in 2011 and reached a climax in 2016 when a clique in the Turkish Armed Forces attempted to undertake a coup to topple the government. Accusing Gülen for masterminding the coup, the AKP has since started an all-​out war against Gülenists; thousands have been imprisoned and exiled, and the assets of Gülenist companies have been confiscated.

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  103 Muslim identity that stretches beyond ethnic divisions. However, in-​depth conversations with them reveal a different picture:  While advocating the unity of Kurds and Turks under the umbrella of Islam, they embrace the state’s version of Turkish-​Islamic synthesis and display a subtle (and at times not so subtle) preference for Turkish identity. To justify this preference, they resort to historical examples that, in their mind, prove “Turks’ ability to lead the Muslim world.” Take, for example, Erhan, a Turkish Gülen movement member living in Diyarbakır. In a long conversation in which he referenced Fethullah Gülen and Said Nursi several times, he first criticized Turkish and Kurdish nationalisms: “The Ottomans were very successful in achieving Muslim fraternity. Unfortunately, we lost that coherence with the birth of nationalism. To be honest, Turkish nationalism gave birth to Kurdish nationalism and they fed each other. What we need to decide is whether we want to protect our religion or our nation.” However, just like Tahsin Hoca, he immediately went on to underline the importance of a unified Muslim community led by Turks: We are one single body. Turks comprise our mind while Kurds comprise our strength and courage. We should act together, we should not get divided, if we do, then we’ll be defeated. Let me give you an example: Back in the day, Muslim armies were making plans to conquer a particular city. The Kurds said, “let’s go conquer it now!”; the Turks said, “no, let’s wait for a suitable time,” and the Arabs kept silent. Eventually they all listened to the Turks, waited for the suitable time and ended up conquering the city. This is why Kurds and Turks need each other. Left to themselves the Kurds are not even able to elect a village headman (muhtar). Rumor has it that in one village 60 Kurds killed each other during local elections.

What started as a criticism of Kurdish and Turkish nationalisms and a eulogy for Muslim unity quickly turned into a eulogy for Turkish superiority, which underlines Turks’ indispensability for the preservation of a united Muslim ummah. This same line of thinking was also evident in statements by other Gülen movement members, as well as members of the Naqshbandi Menzil religious order. Yusuf, an enthusiastic Menzil member living in Batman, told me: Our prophet said that Muslims are like the teeth of a comb. They are exactly like each other. That is why we should overlook our differences. I know

104  Under the Banner of Islam Kurds and Turks speak different languages and I am aware of the injustice and discrimination Kurds have been exposed to in the past. However, those days have passed now. What we need to do is to underline our similarities rather than our differences. We share a homeland with Kurds; we share a flag. We should embrace these similarities. I understand they want to speak their own language and but I don’t understand the Kurdish imams’ demand to give the Friday sermons in Kurdish. I think it will be more harmful than beneficial; it will divide the Muslim jamaat further. Nowadays everyone speaks Turkish here in Batman, it’s hard to find someone who doesn’t understand Turkish.

It’s worth mentioning that from the way he spoke and his attitude, one could tell that Yusuf was not being cynical. To the contrary, he sincerely believed that it would be divisive for Muslim unity if Kurdish imams were given the right to preach in Kurdish. However, he did not even think of questioning the supremacy of Turkish over Kurdish; he just took it for granted. Another Menzil member, Emine, was in agreement with Yusuf. One of my two female interviewees, Emine agreed to meet me in Diyarbakır, after a women-​only sohbet gathering (pious reading circles where informal conversations with religious overtones take place) that she had organized. When I arrived at the address she gave me, I could tell by the number of shoes at the entrance of the apartment that it was a pretty crowded gathering. When I found Emine at the far end of the spacious living room, she was still busy talking to some women. Waiting for my turn, I watched and listened to Emine calm down a woman who was worried about her unruly children and her alcoholic husband. The conversation ended in Emine giving the woman some money before sending her away with the consolation that she should trust God, as “God would never give anyone more pain and problems than they can endure.” The teary-​eyed woman thanked Emine, kissed her hand (a gesture of respect, usually toward the elderly—​though in this particular incident the woman did not necessarily look younger than Emine), and left in a rush. Emine and I were finally alone in the room. Before asking Emine my usual questions, I asked her about what I had just seen. She explained it in further detail: “Menzil has ‘sohbet houses’ in different neighborhoods in Diyarbakır. Women meet at these houses twice a week for two hours. I know some of these women closely; they share their problems with me after the sohbet, I try to help them as much as I can, offering them

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  105 religiously guided council. To those who are underprivileged we also provide financial help.” She showed me an empty brown wallet. “Look,” she said, “this was full when I came here today. I distributed all the money to those in need. This is what Islam asks us to do: help those in need.” Considering that Menzil is one of the most influential religious orders in Turkey, with a quite extensive network, this encounter was intriguing for me. I wanted to learn more from Emine about the inner workings of the order, but she cut my questions short and skillfully diverted the topic to the main reason of my visit. “So, you said on the phone that you want to talk about Civil Friday Prayers, right?” she asked. “Yes,” I said, “I have been interviewing different religious actors on this issue and I was curious about Menzil’s stance on it.” “I cannot talk for Menzil,” Emine said, “but let me tell you what I think: I have been living in Diyarbakır for 20 years now, and I can tell you that there is no conflict between Kurdish and Turkish people.” She then went on to underline the exact hadith Yusuf had referenced: “The believers are equal to each other like the teeth of a comb,” she said. “There cannot be any ranking among the believers. The Qur’an says that one should pray to God in whichever language they feel most comfortable. As such, I understand the Kurds’ demand to pray in Kurdish. Yet, everyone here understands Turkish, there are only very few people who don’t understand it. I say this all the time: You can speak Kurdish everywhere in this city. Speaking Kurdish would constitute no problem; maybe only in a Friday sermon would it be a problem. Other than that, though, Kurdish is spoken everywhere. It is not right to turn this into identity politics. Some Kurds claim they don’t understand Turkish and ask that sermons be given in Kurdish. In fact, they do understand Turkish. What they do is identity politics. Our religion prohibits identity politics.” Reminiscent of earlier interviews with Muslim Turks, Emine underlines the equality of Kurds and Turks as believers, and references Islam’s tolerant approach to different ethnicities. Yet, this does not prevent her from criticizing Kurds’ demand for Kurdish sermons with the reasoning that they already speak Turkish. The debate between Kurdish Nurcus (specifically the Med-​Zehra and Zehra groups) and Turkish Nurcus (specifically the Gülenists) as to the alterations in Said-​i Nursi’s writings is a case in point. Ethnically Kurdish, Nursi refers to “Kurds” and “Kurdistan” several times in his collected writings, entitled Risale-​i Nur. Although it would be incorrect to categorize him as an outright Kurdish nationalist, in Münazarat (Debates), a piece he wrote in 1911,

106  Under the Banner of Islam he specifically focuses on the question of why Kurds “were lagging behind their neighboring nations, whose populations and power were said to be no match to that of the Kurds” (Soleimani 2016: 225). The Kurdish Nurcu circles accuse the Turkish Nurcus, who published the earliest copies of Risale-​i Nur, of distorting certain sections on Kurds and of replacing the word “Kurds” with “Eastern people” and “Kurdistan” with “Eastern cities” (Tekdemir 2018b). This issue came up in my conversation with Muharrem, a Kurdish Nurcu, affiliated with the Zehra Foundation and Nûbihar Publishing: Let me give you an example: The concluding section of Divan-​ı Harb-​i Örfî is addressed to the Kurds, and starts with “O Kurds!” The full expression is, “O efrad-​ı Ekrad (Kurdish individuals)!” They [Turkish Nurcus] have changed it and added “O Selahaddin Eyyubi! O Yavuz Sultan Selim!” This is ridiculous. Why? Because the original says “O Kurds!” Why do you add Yavuz Sultan Selim in here? Yavuz is not the ancestor of Kurds. This is exactly like addressing Turks as the “children of Kawa” or the “children of Rüstem” [both deemed to be Kurdish heroes]. Or, there is another expression, which reads, if my memory serves me right, as follows: “O Kurds, if your ancestors from 2000 years ago saw you, wouldn’t they say ‘you naughty kids!’ ” Turkish Nurcus have changed this part and added “Turks” in here so that the text now reads “O Kurds and Turks!” However, 2000  years ago Turks and Kurds did not even live together [ . . . ]. After the “Kurdish opening” the Nur jamaat in Turkey got completely perplexed. Now, they insert the word “Kurd” even in places where it doesn’t exist in the original text. [ . . . ] Imagine the change in the Gülen movement. For years, they refused to publish ads of Nûbihar Publishing in their newspapers, with the excuse that “this group is Kurdist.” This same jamaat that has problematized even the words “Kurd” and “Kurdistan” is now translating complete volumes (risaleler) into Kurdish! But why? When you question this change, you realize their political preferences have not changed but they have given space to Kurdishness only as a cultural or folkloric variety.

I bring up the issue of distortions in Risale-​i Nur in an interview with Mahmut, a higher-​up Turkish Gülenist in Diyarbakır. I meet him in his office at a hospital where he works as a medical doctor. After asking me to read along with him some pages from the Risale-​i Nur for about half an hour, he shows me specific passages where distortions took place and tells me that these distortions are only cosmetic and do not change the essence of the text.

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  107 Moreover, he adds, they were necessary to protect the Nur jamaat from the watchful eyes of the state back in the past: “Let me clarify:  During Bediüzzaman’s [refers to Said-​i Nursi] lifetime, Risale-​i Nur was written in Qur’anic script [refers to Arabic script] and its publication was banned. Between 1956 and 1960 the first Latin script editions of Risale-​i Nur were published. In 1973 or ’74, Hizmet Foundation and Sözler Publishing House were established and thanks to their efforts the publication of Risale-​i Nur has stopped becoming an issue. Against this background, the brouhaha about Risale-​i Nur being distorted was voiced towards the ’80s. Yes, there are some altered writings of Bediüzzaman; one of them is Münazarat. Bediüzzaman asked his students, whom he appointed as his heirs and who have control over the content of his writings, to not republish a certain section in Münazarat so that it won’t harm religion itself. Can one not have a say regarding one’s own publications? I can publish the 1st edition and then follow it with an extended or corrected 2nd edition. [ . . . ]. Some parts of the Risale-​i Nur are missing in the Latin script editions. Bediüzzaman’s students explain these omissions with footnotes. For example, there is a part about Wahhabism, which they left out, because they did not want to spark any tensions.” “So, are you suggesting that the parts about Kurds have also been omitted as a result of this reasoning?” “Yes. At times, Bediüzzaman wrote ‘Kurdistan’ and at times ‘vilayet-​i şarkiye’ (eastern province); he even used these two different expressions in the same letter. At times he said ‘Kurds,’ at times ‘hemşehrilerim’ (my fellow townspeople). Sometimes, he used a more embracing expression and said ‘the people of this country’ or ‘my fellow citizens.’ Bediüzzaman is neither Kurdist nor Turkist; let no one distort his stance. The words ‘Kurd’ and ‘Kurdistan’ have never been taken out of Risale-​i Nur intentionally. Yet, we shall keep in mind that democracy in Turkey has always been cut short by military coups. [ . . . ] In such periods, if he used the word ‘Kurd’ they would accuse him of being ‘Kurdist.’ That is why some passages have had to stay subtle. This was the preference of Bediüzzaman’s students. His students would never disrespect Bediüzzaman’s heritage. They took an oath on the Qur’an to be truthful to Bediüzzaman’s writings, and they would not break that oath as long as they are alive. [ . . . ] For example the Münazarat we read in our youth was around 80 pages but it is originally a longer book; Bediüzzaman’s students say that they published only those sections that he

108  Under the Banner of Islam asked them to. Most of the omitted topics are not even political issues. For example, there is a question about whether an Armenian can be a district governor or a soldier. This question is of no concern to me, why do I care about a person’s identity. There are even atheists who work for the state; at least Armenians are believers! This type of omission is not important. [ . . . ] Moreover, Bediüzzaman is known to have said in 1913, ‘in my university [referring to Madrasat-​ül-​Zehra] Arabic is a must, Turkish is necessary, Kurdish is permissible.’ That is to say, Kurdish is not banned. That is why any student of Risale-​i Nur, be they Kurd, Turk, or Arab, would say that Kurdish cannot be banned. This is how fights about this issue can be prevented. If I were to show you the medical school syllabus for the academic year 2012–​ 2013 you could see that first grade medical school students are offered Kurdish as an elective.” “I see the point you are making but what do you think about Kurdish Nurcus’ argument that these omissions—​regardless of the intention of Nursi’s students—​ are contributing to exclusionary nationalism in the long run?” “Look, if your mission is to carry raw eggs in a basket without breaking them, you look for ways to ensure that you do not break them. Bediüzzaman found a similar way to not harm his service to his faith. [ . . . ] Let me tell you one thing: one can claim that a sentence in Risale-​i Nur has been altered in one way, another person can claim that it has been altered in another way, what matters is that these alterations have not changed the truth. For example, in the first edition of Münazarat, between 1911 and 1913, there was this expression ‘zim zim.’ Ağabeyler [referring to Nursi’s students] replaced this with ‘güm güm.’ I ask Kurdish friends what difference there is between the two expressions, apparently none! So, what is the fuss about? Moreover, Turks might not know ‘zim zim,’ but if you say ‘güm güm’ it would address a larger audience; this is no distortion as there is not too much of a change in meaning. In Muhakamat there is a word, ‘kismet,’ and a footnote that reads ‘this is a Kurdish word meaning chickpea.’ Now, what difference does such a footnote make? Keep it or remove it, all the same. . . . There are a few more words like this. In one edition, ‘Şark-​ı Anadolu’ (Eastern Anatolia) is used, in another edition ‘Kurdistan’ is used. One does not become a Turkist only by using Şark-​ı Anadolu just as one does not become a Kurdist only by using Kurdistan. That is why one should care not about some words in Risale-​i Nur being changed, but more about whether this change affects the overall meaning or not.”

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  109 This long quote demonstrates quite well the trivialization of Kurdish demands by some Muslim Turks. In Mahmut’s mind the distortions in Risale-​i Nur, which some Muslim Kurds find problematic, are not important. In contrast to Kurdish Nurcus who consider such changes to be intentionally anti-​Kurdish, Mahmut chooses to deem them either necessary (to protect Islamists from persecution) or inconsequential (bringing no change in the overall meaning of Risale-​i Nur). Yet, the contemptuous tone he deploys when talking about the complaints of Kurdish Nurcus and his justification of the Turkification of some Kurdish words and expressions by the need to reach a broader audience exemplify the majoritarian approach among Turkish Muslims. As these interviews make clear, even though most Muslim Turks start the conversations with an emphasis on the broader Muslim unity, in the course of a short interview, they switch to a nationalist discourse emphasizing the indispensability of Turks and Turkish. In so doing, they fail in their attempt to employ boundary expansion (Wimmer 2009). Although they claim that “Kurds and Turks are all one in their Muslim identity,” rather than embracing this claim they endorse the normative hierarchical ordering of different ethnicities in a religious context in which Turks are deemed superior to Kurds. By portraying Turks as the most indispensable element of the Muslim ummah, they embrace an ethno-​religious discourse that privileges Turkish identity for the well-​being of an overarching Muslim identity. This attitude demonstrates quite well the relevance of “the Turkishness contract” (Ünlü 2016, 2018) to understanding why Sunni Islam fails to act as a supranational identity in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict. Scholars have written extensively on how the founding Republican elites in Turkey envisioned Turkishness as a construct that would encompass ethnically non-​Turkish Muslims (e.g., Laz, Circassians, Kurds, Arabs, Tatars) provided that they were ready to assimilate as Turks (Bayar 2014; Serdar 2019; Yeğen 2004; Yıldız 2010). Sunni Kurds fulfill the criterion of Sunni Muslimness that lies at the heart of Turkishness (Azak 2010). However, those Kurds who actively resist assimilation into Turkishness are left out of the scope of the Turkishness contract, which promises every Turk or Turkified individual “social mobility across the socioeconomic spectrum” (Ünlü 2016: 400). In such a scenario, where “Turkishness” is privileged, “Muslimness” loses its importance (or maintains it only at the discursive level), and it becomes quite hard for Sunni Islam to play a unifying role.

110  Under the Banner of Islam In what follows, via a detailed historical overview, I will argue that this approach emanates from the Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (TIS), which molds Islam and nationalism in one pot in order to pave the way for a more Islamic understanding of Turkish national identity (Kaplan 2002). The official formulation of the TIS is usually traced to the 1960s (Uzer 2016; Waxman 2000)  and its implementation to the aftermath of the 1980 coup (Eligür 2010). Yet, as I will demonstrate in the remainder of this chapter, to understand the emergence of the TIS in full detail, one needs to go back as early as the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (see Çetinsaya 1999 and Lord 2018 for the incessant role of Sunni Islam in the formation of Turkish national identity). It is in the turbulent relationship between Ottomanism, Turkism, and Islamism in the late Ottoman and early Republican periods that the roots of the TIS lie. To that aim, in line with the understanding that “Turkey cannot be understood without reference to its Ottoman past” (Zürcher 1993: 7), in the following section I first shed light on the formation and failure of Ottomanism in the nineteenth century. I then move on to the emergence and evolution of Turkish nationalism and its entanglement with Islam in the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. I  finally discuss how the TIS was strongly instilled in Turkey since the 1950s and how it grew stronger after the 1980 military coup. In the light of this historical account, I argue that the strength of the TIS is an important explanatory factor in understanding how ethno-​ nationalism manages to maintain its power among the Turkish religious elites and why, despite the decade-​long AKP propaganda, the supranational religious approach has not resonated well, even among the state-​affiliated Turkish religious elites. In concluding the chapter, I bring to fore the impact of the TIS on the AKP via a demonstration of the vacillations in Erdoğan’s discourse from Muslim-​Turkish synthesis to Turkish-​Islamic synthesis.

Ottomanism, Islamism, Turkism: The Birth Pangs of Turkish Nationalism Ottomanism As I have surveyed briefly in Chapter 2, it was in the nineteenth century that full-​fledged nationalism made its way into the Ottoman Empire. Two interdependent developments in the nineteenth century paved the way for the

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  111 emergence of the debates on nationalist ideas: the revolts of the non-​Muslim ethnic groups in the Balkans for autonomy and independence—​Greeks (1821), Serbians (1804), Bulgarians (1876), and Romanians (1848)—​and the accompanying Tanzimat reforms between 1839 and 1876. The independence of the Greeks in 1830, the Serbians and Romanians in 1878, and the Bulgarian autonomy of 1878 sparked both resentment toward these ethnic groups and their European and Russian supporters, and a curiosity about nationalism (Belge and Günçıkan 2006). As Hakan Erdem puts it, “the real importance of the Greek War of Independence for the Ottomans was that it brought nationalism home. [ . . . ] The Ottoman administrators [ . . . ] came to realize that nationalism was a potent force to fight against, usually by the adoption of the same tools used by their opponents” (2005, quoted in Deringil 2012: 12). In an attempt to contain the unrest among the non-​Muslim population and to continue the modernization and centralization of the Ottoman state (which had been underway since the Nizam-​i Cedid (the New Order) reforms of Selim III in the late eighteenth century), in 1839 Abdülmecid I  announced the Edict of Gülhane. The edict officially marked the beginning of the Tanzimat (reorganization/​regulation) period that was to culminate in the issuance of the first Ottoman constitution in 1876. As “a semi-​constitutional charter that promised security of person and property to all Ottoman subjects” (Mardin 1996: 357), the imperial edict of 1839 was an important step toward the Ottomanization of previously Muslim, Christian, and Jewish subjects (Hanioğlu 2010:  87). As such, it signaled a transition from the millet system to Ottomanism. Actually, the roots of Ottomanism could be traced back to the reign of Mahmud II (1808–​1839) to whom the following statement is attributed:  “From now [on], I  want to understand which of my subjects are Muslims only in the mosque, which are Christians only in the church, which are Jews only in the synagogue” (quoted in Grassi 2014: 74). In this vein, Osmanlılık (being Ottoman) underlined “the equality of all the subjects (not citizens yet), Muslims and non-​Muslims, and their allegiance to the house of Osman and to the institution of the Sultanate” (Rahme 1999: 24). In 1851, Encümen-​i Daniş, a scientific institution aimed at assisting the Porte’s educational policy, was established. Although it was closed in 1862, the most renowned act of Encümen-i Daniş, of considerable importance in the spreading of Ottomanism, was the decree ordering that a grammar showing the systematic of Ottoman language be constituted (Mardin 2005). The Reform Edict of 1856, providing egalitarian guarantees for Muslims and non-​Muslims alike, and the Ottoman nationality law of

112  Under the Banner of Islam 1869 (see Hanley 2016 for a detailed discussion), which “sought to draw a clear line between Ottoman and foreign subjects” (Vezenkov 2013: 253), further stressed a common Ottoman identity. Finally, the Ottoman Constitution of 1876 declared all subjects of the Empire as Ottomans, regardless of their religious identity. The constitution was accompanied by the establishment of the first parliament in the Ottoman Empire, to which both Muslim and non-​ Muslim members were elected in 1877. The reforms and the emphasis on Ottomanism aroused heavy criticism from different sectors of the society. Muslims criticized the reforms for putting an end to Muslim sovereignty in the Empire and for privileging non-​ Muslims both economically and politically (Göçek 1993; Hanioğlu 2010; Taştan 2012). Muslim ulama objected to the principle of equality between non-​Muslims and Muslims on the grounds that it was against Islamic teachings. This criticism was so widespread that Midhat Pasha, the reform-​ minded grand vizier of Abdulhamid II, who cleared the path for writing of the 1876 constitution and the establishment of the parliament, had to resort to the Qur’an to prove that his proposals were in line with Islamic teachings (Devereux 1963: 38). Non-​Muslims, on the other hand, were not happy with the reforms, either. Nor did they embrace Ottomanism, as they did not want to give up the privileges they were enjoying under the millet system (e.g., tax and conscription exemptions) (Zürcher 1993). While they ranked lower than Muslims in the social hierarchy, thanks to capitulations (economic and political privileges given to European powers) and the protections they received from European powers, non-​Muslim merchants, especially since the eighteenth century, had an economically privileged status, which had led to religiously demarcated class divisions and economic activities (Göçek 1996). Such bright boundaries around religious identities contrasted with the blurry boundaries around Ottoman identity. Foreigners and non-​Muslims thought of Ottomans and Turks as synonymous, whereby Anatolian peasants considered only elites as Ottomans. The meaning of the term was not clear, even for those who self-​identified as such. “As Ahmed Midhat Efendi once stated: ‘I am Ottoman. And not only an Ottoman—​I am the purest of Ottomans, I am a Muslim and a Turk” (Vezenkov 2009: 48). The assumption that “all are Ottomans but some are purer” demonstrated not only the supremacy of Muslims over non-​Muslims, and Turks over non-​Turks, but also Ottomanism’s broken promise of equality and the confusion experienced by Ottoman intellectuals and politicians in negotiating their

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  113 entangled identities. This belief in the supremacy of (Sunni) Muslim Turks over non-​Muslims (Greek Orthodox, Jewish, Armenian Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, etc.) and non-​Turkish Muslims (Kurd, Laz, Arab, Circassian, Tatar, etc.) was to make its way into the Republican period, laying the ground for present-​day debates about Turkish national identity (Çağaptay 2006). This “identity crisis” was triggered further by the large-​scale territorial losses in the Balkans, where most of the Empire’s non-​Muslim population resided. Around 1860s, non-​Muslims still constituted about 40% of the overall population (Çetinsaya 1999). By 1878, their numbers had decreased by almost twofold as Greece, Serbia, and Romania had all gained independence, and Bulgaria was autonomous. Meanwhile, the Muslim population of the Empire kept increasing. In addition to Muslims fleeing the newly established Balkan nation-​states, Muslims fleeing Russian expansion in Crimea (Crimean Tatars) and Caucasus (Circassians) also sought refuge in Ottoman lands (Kale 2014). Especially after the 1877–​1878 Russo-​Turkish War, a tremendous number of Muslim refugees flowed into the Empire. Over a million Muslims had to emigrate from the Balkans (Karpat 1985: 74, cited in Şeker 2013: 5). “As a result, the Muslim population had risen from 59.6 per cent in the 1820s to 76.2 per cent by the 1890s” (Lord 2018: 44). Between 1829 and 1914 an estimated number of 5 to 7 million Muslims had settled in the Ottoman Empire as a result of forced migration (Kale 2014: 254).

Islamism The Muslimization of the Empire’s population brought to stage Islamism as an alternative ideological current to unify the diverse Ottoman society. By 1878, it was clear that Tanzimat reforms and Ottomanism, despite their emphasis on equality, had failed in soothing the nationalist aspirations of non-​ Muslim communities. Convinced by the ineffectiveness of the reforms, in 1878, Abdülhamid II closed down the parliament and canceled the constitution, effectively putting an end to the Tanzimat era. As I have explained in Chapter 2, it is to Islam that Abdülhamid II would turn to hold together the crumbling Empire. In fact, this line of thinking preceded the Hamidian era. As early as 1860s, the Young Ottomans, whose roots lay in an alliance of disgruntled clerics and young officials (Mardin 1962), had formulated an Islamic-​constitutional ideology of Ottomanism grounded in shari‘a (Rahme 1999). While Young

114  Under the Banner of Islam Ottomans defended libertarian ideals and freedom, they were also critical of the absolutism of the Tanzimat reforms (Mardin 1962). Heavily criticizing the privileges and egalitarian treatment promised by Tanzimat reforms to non-​Muslims, leading figures of the movement, such as Namık Kemal, Ziya Pasha, and Ali Suavi, blamed the problems of the Empire on European intrusion and non-​Muslim complicity. The uprisings of non-​Muslim communities and the ensuing territorial losses in the Balkans, along with the increasing Muslim population in the Empire, convinced these intellectuals that the Empire’s integrity could be achieved only through a cultural unity based on shari‘a. “The Shar‘ia, as conceived by [Namık] Kemal, incorporated within it key elements of the European discourse of reform: sovereignty of the people, representation, constitutionalism, egalitarianism, individual freedom and division and separation of powers among the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government” (Rahme 1999: 32). Kemal believed that these factors were readily available in the Islamic teachings and that their implementation would help prevent the decline of the Empire. In this vein, it would not be wrong to claim that the Young Ottomans propagated a form of Islamic nationalism where the Islamic community was considered a nation in itself (Türköne 1991). Yet, it was in the Hamidian period (1878–​1909) that “Islamism was accepted as a form of proto-​nationalism” (Çetinsaya 1999: 353). Abdülhamid II envisioned a (Sunni) Muslim ummah that would extend beyond the borders of the Empire and bring together Muslims, be they Ottoman subjects or not (Vezenkov 2009:  49; Kayalı 1997:  35). As demonstrated in Chapter  2, to ascertain such mobilization, he highlighted the title of Caliph—​carried by Ottoman Sultans since the sixteenth century—​much more than his predecessors. Throughout his long reign he deployed pan-​ Islamism as both a domestic policy tool and a foreign policy tool. Still, “his Islamism neither negated nor superseded Ottomanism. [ . . . ] [It was] Ottomanism equipped with ideological embellishment deriving from Islam” (Kayalı 1997: 31). While Abdülhamid did not support Turkish nationalism, it was during his reign that a certain level of Turkish nationalism gained traction via some literary movements and certain newspapers and journals (Çetinsaya 1999: 353). Even though these movements were mostly concerned with linguistic aspects of Turkish culture, they still conceptualized a Turkish nationalism that was imbued with religion (Kushner 1977). As such, one could claim that the TIS was already in the making, even during this period. Yet, it

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  115 was with the Young Turk period that Turkish nationalism, as well as Turkism, would assert more power as an independent ideological current.

Turkism United by their opposition to Hamidian autocracy, the Young Turks, organized under the name of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), undertook a revolution in 1908. As a result, Abdülhamid II was forced to restore the constitution and reopen the parliament. As the successor to the Young Ottomans, what drew the Young Turks together was still Ottomanism (Belge and Günçıkan 2006). Indeed, with members from every ethnic and religious community in the Empire, “the Young Turk movement was unmistakably more ‘Ottoman’ than its Young Ottoman antecedent, which was a movement of Turcophone Istanbul officials” (Kayalı 1997: 39). Moreover, most of them still promoted Islam as a common identity (Hanioğlu 1995; Ahmad 1969). While some figures among them, such as Ahmet Rıza and Abdullah Cevdet, openly defended secularism in their writings (Zürcher 2005), some others, such as Ziya Gökalp and Fuad Köprülü, defended Islam’s centrality to the nation (Arai 2003). Similarly, Mizancı Murat was an Islamist and had come from Dağıstan only to give support to the Caliph (Belge and Günçıkan 2006). As such, at the turn of the century, Turkism was still in the shadow of Ottomanism and Islamism. It made its way onto the stage first through the works of Mustafa Celaleddin Pasha, Mehmet Emin Yurdakul, and Şemseddin Sami Frashëri, and later through the writings of Yusuf Akçura, a Muslim Tatar from the Russian Empire, and one of the main ideologues of Turkism. While Mustafa Celaleddin Pasha’s 1869 book Les Turcs anciens et modernes (Ancient and Modern Turks) focused on Turkish contributions to civilization and their racial origins (Göçek 2002: 37), in 1899, in response to the 1897 Greek-​Ottoman war, Yurdakul penned a nationalist poem, titled Anadolu’dan Bir Ses yahut Cenge Giderken (A Voice from Anatolia or Going to Battle); “I am a Turk /​My religion and race are sublime,” the first two lines read (cited in Uzer 2016: 24). Meanwhile, Şemseddin Sami Frashëri, compiler of the dictionary Kamûs-​i Turkî (The Turkish Dictionary), was busy preparing lexicographical works focusing on pre-​Ottoman Turkic texts and establishing Turkish as the Ottoman language (Bilmez 2009). This early period also witnessed the publication of literary and historical studies on Turks and the Turanian race written by European Orientalists, like Leon Cahun and

116  Under the Banner of Islam Joseph de Guigne (Göçek 2002). Especially Cahun’s Introduction à l’histoire de l’Asie: Turcs et Mongols, des origins à 1405 (Introduction to the History of Asia: Turks and Mongols, from the origins to 1405) (1896), supposedly given to Dr. Nazım, one of the leaders of the Young Turks, by the French Consul in Salonica (Karpat 1959: 23) and translated into Turkish by Necip Asım, has had lasting influence among not only the Young Turks but also the early Republican cadres who, upon Mustafa Kemal’s request, consulted Cahun’s works in the formation of the Turkish History Thesis of the 1930s (Hanioğlu 2011). In his 1904 essay, Üç Tarz-​ı Siyaset (Three Ways of Politics), Akçura underlined Ottomanism, Islamism, and Turkism as three possible ways for the political survival of the Ottoman Empire and proposed Turkism as the most feasible option (Akçura 1976). In response to Akçura, Ali Kemal, another Young Turk, wrote that it was “not possible to separate the Turkic from the Islamic, the Islamic from the Turkic, the Islamic and the Turkic from the Ottoman and vice versa, ‘to divide the whole into three’ ” (Akçura 1976: 37, quoted in Vezenkov 2009: 49). The same year Akçura wrote Üç Tarz-​ı Siyaset, Nagib Azoury, a Syrian Christian, wrote an essay asking for an independent Arab state of Muslims and Christians (Kayalı 1997). Both Akçura’s call for Turkism and Azoury’s call for Arabism demonstrated the emerging suspicion about Ottomanism as a unifying identity among both the Muslim and non-​Muslim populations of the Empire. In 1908, to highlight Turkish culture and language, the “politically Ottomanist, culturally Turkist” (Uzer 2016: 29) Türk Derneği (Turkish Society) was established. Yet, it was in the 1910s that Turkism and the idea of a Turkish nationality based mainly on ethnicity rooted in language (Ongur 2014) started to gain support among Ottoman intellectuals. The gradually worsening condition of the Empire, especially the period starting with the Italian invasion of Tripoli (1911) and continuing with the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, in which the Ottomans lost most of their remaining territory in the Balkans, had a prominent effect in shaking the Young Turks’ belief in Ottomanism. Meanwhile, Muslim Turkic immigrants from the Russian Empire, like İsmail Gaspıralı, Ahmed Ağaoğlu, and Hüseyinzade Ali, who embraced Jadidism—​a Muslim modernist, reformist movement—​ started promoting Turkism. The disillusionment in Ottomanism, along with the propagation of Turkism by these intellectuals, especially via the publication of several journals, such as Genç Kalemler, Türk Yurdu, and Türk Derneği (Arai 2003), paved the way for the transformation of the Young Turks’ thinking.

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  117 Such transformation was quite visible in the writings of Ziya Gökalp, one of the major ideologues of the CUP and later of the Turkish Republic. Originally of Kurdish descent, Gökalp was, like the majority of the Young Turks, a supporter of the idea of Ottomanism (Celnarová 1997) when he first joined the movement. Yet, like the rest of the CUP cadres, it was not long before he lost his belief in Ottomanism. Seen as the ideological father of Turkish nationalism, Gökalp “claims to have begun to develop an interest in ancient Turkish history in 1896, after reading the writings of Leon Cahun about the Turks” (Akçam 2004: 62). It still took him some time to develop his nationalist ideas as he published his first Turkist poem, entitled Altın Destan (Golden Saga), in the journal Genç Kalemler in 1911 (Şapolyo 1943). In 1914, he started writing for İslam Mecmuası (Journal of Islam), the main outlet in which the Unionist wing of the CUP promoted the coexistence of nationalism and Islam, and the separation of religion and state (Ahmad 1969). It was in the pages of İslam Mecmuası that he advocated for Islamic reform, which would make religious institutions more compatible with modernization (Dressler 2015). Later, in Türkçülüğün Esasları (The Fundamentals of Turkism) (1923), he stated that both Ottomanism and Islamism were harmful currents, and the only way to salvation was Turkism. Ottomanism was a futile idea in that it tried to bring together different ethnicities of independent cultures, and Islamism was futile in that it wrongly juxtaposed “nation” and “ummah”3 (Gökalp 2004: 16), which were not necessarily antithetical to each other. It is of critical importance to note here that Gökalp and other Young Turks were not against Islamism per se; rather, they were critical of pan-​Islamism. The independence of Muslim-​majority Albania in 1912 and the revolts in and the subsequent loss of mostly Muslim Arab territories during and after World War I (see Dawn 1962 on Arabism) had convinced them that pan-​Islamism was doomed to fail. That is why they advocated a Turkified Islamism, in which “Islam served as cement, Turkism provided the practical framework” (Benningsen 1985: 40, cited in Çetinsaya 1999: 355). Both Akçura and Gökalp, in the spirit of Durkheimian functionalism, considered religion to be an important tie bringing together and unifying the Turkish nation (see Yavuz 1993 on Akçura; see Spencer 1958 and Celnarová 1997 on Gökalp). Religion could act as a complementary force to nationalism, provided that 3 Gökalp argues against the belief, put forward by Islamists, that the unification of all Muslims could be a nation. Defining ummah as the group of all people believing in the same religion, he states that the term “nation” puts importance on commonality in language and culture rather than in religion (2004: 16).

118  Under the Banner of Islam it does not surpass the importance of the nation. “I belong to the Turkish nation, the Islamic ummah, and Western civilization,” Ziya Gökalp would declare in Türkçülüğün Esasları (cited in Lord 2018: 45). Similarly, Akçura wrote that religions could maintain their social and political importance by “becoming a helper and even a hand-​maiden to the national unities” (Akçura 1976: 35). This stance was furthered by Ahmed Ağaoğlu, who, in response to Islamist Babanzade Ahmed Naim, iterated that “Turkists accept Islam as a national religion” (cited in Çetinsaya 1997: 359). “Effectively reversing Abdulhamid II’s Islamic-​Turkish synthesis into a Turkish-​Islamic synthesis” (Lord 2018: 45), such an approach was to form the backbone of the TIS in the Republican period. These ideological debates had important repercussions on the everyday lives of the population. Between 1913 and 1918, the CUP implemented demographic engineering policies that intended to Turkify the Ottoman lands (Dündar 2006, 2008; Ülker 2005). While non-​Muslims were exposed to deportation, religious conversion, seizure of property, massacres, and murders (Üngör 2012),4 the incoming Muslim population, fleeing a similar fate in the Balkans, as well as in Russia, were resettled in Anatolia with the specific aim of ensuring their assimilation into the existing Turkish population (Dündar 2001). To that end, in 1914, the General Directorate for Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants was established. It was mainly charged with the task of deportation of non-​Muslims, sedentarization of existing Turkmen, Kurdish, Alevi, Bektashi, and Arab tribes, and providing property for and resettlement of the incoming Muslim immigrants. Special attention was paid to making sure that non-​Turkish Muslims (e.g., Bosnians, Albanians, and Kurds) would not constitute more than 5%–​10% of the population in any Anatolian region (Şeker 2013: 7). As a result of the CUP’s demographic engineering policies, around 8 million people, approximately half of the Anatolian population, had to move during World War I (Dündar 2006: 37–​42, cited in Şeker 2013: 7). At the end of World War I, Anatolia was ethnically and religiously much more homogeneous than it was at the turn of the century. A new ethnic hierarchy, at the top of which stood (Sunni) Muslim Turks, followed by non-​Turkish Muslims, and non-​Muslims, was established (Üngör and Polatel 2011).

4 To understand the extent of the CUP’s demographic engineering project, special attention must be paid to the Armenian Genocide of 1915. For more details on the issue, see Akçam (2012) and Göçek (2014).

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  119

Turkish History Thesis and the Turkification of Islam The CUP’s leading figures were no longer in power during the War of Independence (1919–​1922) and the establishment of the Turkish Republic (1923); both were led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who did not belong to the central command of the CUP. Regardless, as products of Ottoman institutions themselves, Mustafa Kemal and the Kemalist cadres, especially until the end of the 1920s, continued the demographic policies of the CUP and the Turkish-​Islamic synthesis of the Young Turks. Although Kemalist nationalism has usually been portrayed as hostile to Islam, in reality, religion has been at the center of Turkish nationalism since the very early days of the Republic (Adar 2019; Armstrong 2012; Çetinsaya 1999; Lord 2018; Poulton 1997; Taştan 2012; Yaman and Dönmez 2018; Yavuz 2003). While Republican cadres removed Islam from the definition of the newly established Turkish nation-​state, in practice “they elaborated a Turkified Islam [a la Ziya Gökalp], which they hoped would strengthen Turkish national identity” (Dumont 1984: 30). During the War of Independence, Mustafa Kemal and his followers deployed Islamic discourse to increase mobilization around the cause of independence, as well as to boost their legitimacy among the local notables. “The founding charters of the Turkish Republic and the declarations of the conferences in Erzurum (July 1919) and Sivas (September 1919), referred to those ‘Muslims who form one nation’ or to ‘all Islamic elements of the population,’ whilst the ‘Turkish nation’ was hardly mentioned” (Waxman 2000: 9). Similarly, Republican elites resorted to Islamic theology in abolishing the Caliphate (1924). Minister of Justice Seyyid Bey, a fiqh expert and an Islamist thinker, was the main advocate of the abolishment in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi/​TBMM). Suggesting that the Caliphate is not a compulsory institution according to Islamic sources, he argued that the TBMM can substitute the Ottoman Caliphate because “[it] is a better form of government as it implements the Qur’an’s command of consultation (meşveret)” (quoted in Guida 2008: 282–​283). Thus, paradoxically, one of the most secularist of all Republican reforms was accomplished only with the help of Islamic theology. The important role of (Sunni) Islam in defining Turkish national identity in the early Republican period was also clearly visible in immigration policies. For example, the Greek-​ Turkish population exchange (Bedlek 2016; Iğsız 2018), which forcibly relocated one and a half million people,

120  Under the Banner of Islam marked religion, rather than ethnicity or language, as the main criterion for determining the ethnicity of different communities. Starting in 1923, Greek-​Orthodox Christians from Turkey were forcibly sent to Greece, while Muslims from Greece were sent to Turkey. As such, “what took place was not an exchange of Greeks and Turks, but rather an exchange of Greek Orthodox Christians and Ottoman Muslims” (Lewis 1968: 355). Similarly, the Law on Settlement, first adopted in 1926, then expanded in 1934, stated that people who do not belong to Turkish ethnicity and culture could not be admitted as immigrants or refugees into Turkey (Ülker 2007). Penned as such, this law allowed the categorization as “Turkish” of non-​Turkish Muslim groups from the Balkans, such as Bosnians, Pomaks, and Tatars. On the other hand, it excluded non-​Muslim Turkish groups, such as Orthodox Christian Gagauz Turks from Moldova, as “non-​Turkish” (Waxman 2000). In the same vein, the Karamanlis of Central Anatolia, a Turkish-​speaking Orthodox community, was forcibly migrated to Greece during the population exchange. This shows the extent to which ethnicity was based on religion in the early Republican period. Although accorded protection and rights under the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, the remaining non-​Muslims in the country usually faced stereotypes and prejudices since they were categorized as potential “traitors.” The legacy of the non-​Muslim uprisings in the nineteenth century, as well as the fear of the 1920 Sèvres Treaty—​partitioning Anatolia between imperial powers (French, British, Italians) and Greeks, establishing an independent Armenian state and a British-​controlled Kurdish entity—​was still alive. Reflecting this suspicion, speaking at the Congress of the Teachers’ Association in 1926, one of the proponents of secular Turkish nationalism, Ali Haydar Taner, suggested that “it is impossible to make non-​Muslims sincere Turkish citizens” (cited in Yavuz 2003: 47). This suspicion also laid the ground for the Turkification of the economic capital and the promulgation of numerous laws and regulations favoring Muslim merchants and employees over non-​Muslims (Aktar 2009). During the parliamentary debates concerning the 1924 constitution, the definitions of Turkish nationality and Turkish citizenship were fiercely disputed, as lawmakers could not agree on the status of non-​Muslims in the nation. “The initial proposal for the article on Turkish citizenship had treated it as congruous with nationality: ‘all people in Turkey without distinction of race and religion are Turks.’ [ . . . ] However, such a formulation was objected by lawmakers in 1924 as they argued that there should be a distinction between a Turkish national and a citizen of Turkey. [In the end] Article 88 was

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  121 revised in a manner that sidestepped the issue of defining the substance of a Turkish nation: ‘All people in Turkey without distinction of race and religion are Turkish citizens” (Lord 2018: 57–​58). Such a seemingly inclusive definition of citizenship helped conceal the importance of religious identity in defining nationality. Things started to change in the mid-​1920s. Reforms such as the abolition of the Caliphate and the establishment in its place of the Presidency of Religious Affairs (1924), closure of the Islamic seminaries (madrasas) with the Law of the Unification of Education (Tevhid-​i Tedrisat) (1924), prohibition of Sufi lodges and orders (tarikats) with Law #677 (1925), adoption of new civil (Swiss), commercial (Italian and German), and criminal (Italian) codes (1926) demonstrated the Republican elites’ resolution to build a secular Turkish nation-​state free of Islamic connotations associated with the Ottoman Empire. Through these reforms Republican elites started to put forward a conceptualization of Turkishness based on common language and shared culture, rather than religion. This emphasis on linguistic and cultural nationalism was best embodied by the Turkish History Thesis. Building on the heels of the 1928 Alphabet Reform, in which the Arabic script was replaced with the Latin script for Turkish, the Turkish History Thesis aimed to establish a rupture with the Ottoman past and highlight the pre-​Ottoman history of the Turks. In order to fully understand the origins of the committee that gave birth to the Turkish History Thesis, one must go back to 1912, the year that witnessed the establishment of the Türk Ocakları (Turkish Hearths) by a group of students whose main motive was to fight against the Caliphate and the Sultan (Ersanlı 2003; Üstel 1997). What marked the importance of Türk Ocakları for the Republican period was its role as the meeting place of the nationalist thinkers (e.g., Ziya Gökalp, Yusuf Akçura, Halide Edip Adıvar, and Hüseyinzade Ali) of the late Ottoman period (Ersanlı 2003). Their main concern was to “ameliorate and develop the economical, scientific and social standards of the Turks, at the same time enhance the Turkish race and language” (Alp 1917; cited in Ersanlı 2003) by writing about the pre-​Ottoman history of the Turks. The hymn of the Hearth, which read, “Our temple is the Hearth and our Kaaba is only and always the sublime, shiny Turan”5 (cited in Uzer 2016: 33), emphasized Turkish nationalism as a secular religion. 5 Kaaba is the holiest site of Islam in Mecca, while Turan is the historical/​mythical homeland of Turks in Central Asia.

122  Under the Banner of Islam It was to the thinkers around Türk Ocakları that Kemalist history writing owed much of the information coined in the Turkish History Thesis. Ziya Gökalp had died in 1924, but his ideas were quite influential during the early Republican era; other prominent Turkists, such as Yusuf Akçura, Ahmet Ağaoğlu, and Reşit Tankut, also played an effective role in conveying the ideological heritage of the Young Turks to Kemalists like Afet İnan and Şevket Aziz Kansu, who later formed the Turkish History Thesis (Copeaux 2000). Finally, in 1931, Türk Ocakları was abolished and integrated into the CHP. Shortly before this union, in March 1930, Türk Ocakları Türk Tarih Tetkik Heyeti (Turkish Hearths’ Committee for the Exploration of Turkish History) was founded (Copeaux 2000; Maksudyan 2005), and a year later, with the closure of the Türk Ocakları, this Heyet took the name of Türk Tarih Tetkik Cemiyeti (The Association of the Exploration of Turkish History). At the end of 1930 came the first product of the committee’s research: Türk Tarihinin Ana Hatları (The Main Contours of Turkish History), a book about the origins and civilization of Turks. The writers stated the purpose of the book as follows: The history books published in our country and their French equivalents have up to now, whether consciously or not, berated the importance of Turks in world history. [ . . . ] Our main concern in writing this book is to uncover the intelligence and character of Turks, to show Turks how strong they are and to display the relation between national development and racial origins. (İnan et al. 1999: 25)

This “uncovering” of the history inevitably involved the invention of a new Turkish history excluding Ottomans. To further assist and foster the ideal of a Turkish nation, the authors emphasized Central Asia as the homeland of Turks and highlighted Turks as civilizers of every region they passed through during their long migration from Central Asia. According to this mythical narrative, China, India, Iran, Anatolia, and Egypt all prospered thanks to Turkish migration (Copeaux 2000; Ersanlı 2003). To solidify the Turkish History Thesis, two consecutive Turkish History Congresses were held in 1932 and 1937. Both stated as their purpose the construction of a Turkish history based on the importance of the Turkish race (Maksudyan 2005; Belge and Günçıkan 2006; Ersanlı 2003). To provide a “scientific” basis for their emphasis on race, participants like Afet İnan, Şevket Aziz Kansu, and Reşit Galip referred to anthropologists and biologists

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  123 like Joseph Deniker, Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau, Paul Topinard, and Eugène Pittard,6 whose works inspired eugenics and racist theories (Maksudyan 2005). Dissenters to the thesis were sidelined; some intellectuals, like Zeki Velidi Togan,7 a Turkist migrant from Russia, had to leave Turkey after the first Historical Congress in 1932. Another attempt to propogate the Turkish History Thesis was the Güneş-​ Dil Teorisi (Sun-​Language Theory). According to this theory, Turks were the first community to develop a language, and as they kept migrating, they carried this language to different regions in the world, where it gave birth to other languages (Mardin 2005; Maksudyan 2005; Ersanlı 2003; Copeaux 2000). Three language congresses were held to support the Güneş-​Dil Teorisi in 1932, 1934, and 1936. The views explained in these congresses emphasized Turkish as the ur-​language. “The Turkish language was gradually given a role in uniting the citizens around the same identity. Earlier, the designation ‘Turk’ meant a Muslim citizen of Turkey but now the citizens would unite through the Turkish language which had no tension with the principle of laicité, differently from Islam in its supranational political capacity” (Taştan 2012: 49). In molding the Republican Turkish identity, Kemalist ideologues were inspired by French positivism and solidarism (Mardin 2005), carried to Turkey by the writings of Ziya Gökalp and some other Young Turks (e.g., Tekin Alp, Yusuf Kemal). Solidarism played a notable role, especially in the formulation of secularism and populism, two of the Six Arrows of Kemalism—​republicanism, secularism, nationalism, reformism, populism, and etatism—​adopted at the 1931 congress of CHP and inserted into the Turkish constitution in 1937 (Zürcher 2005). Similarly, in concurrence with solidarism, attempts to exclude religion from public space, leaving the “nation” as the sole concept to unite around, provided a sound base for the principle of secularism. Ertan Aydın, in his research on Ülkü, a Kemalist journal published in the 1930s, finds that the journal authors attempted to break the link between religion and morality by basing the latter on secular ideas (Aydın 2004). 6 In his Race and History (New York, 1926), Pittard, with his anthropological research on the structure of “different races’ skulls,” paves the way for the foundation of the narrative of a great Turkish migration from Central Asia to Europe and Anatolia. He would later become the honorary chairman of the Second Turkish History Congress and the advisor of Afet İnan’s dissertation in Anthropology. 7 After getting his PhD in Germany, Togan returned to Turkey in 1939 to teach at İstanbul University. Ironically, he was arrested in 1944 on charges of pan-​Turkism and racism (see Uzer 2016: 52).

124  Under the Banner of Islam As a result of the Kemalist elites’ emphasis on Turkish language and pre-​ Ottoman Turkic roots, non-​ Turkish-​ speaking Muslims (e.g., Kurds, Laz, Albanians, Circassians, and Tatars) who were included in the nation up until mid-​1920s as “fellow Muslims” were now excluded from it. As elaborated by Ünlü (2016, 2018), in place of the Muslimness contract, a new contract, based on Turkishness, was put in place. Borders of the “nation,” envisioned by the Ottomanists as inclusive of non-​Muslims, Muslims, Turks, and non-​Turks alike, and by Islamists, as inclusive of both Turkish and non-​Turkish (Sunni) Muslims, had shrunk to include only Turkish (Sunni) Muslims. All other groups were accepted as “Turks” depending on their ability to adopt the Turkish language and embrace the Sunni Muslim identity (İçduygu and Aksel 2013: 181). Worried about the existence of non-​Turkish-​speaking immigrant enclaves in Anatolia, Hamdullah Suphi Tanrıöver, who served as the president of Türk Ocakları between 1913 and 1931 (and later between 1949 and 1966), “was adamant that [ . . . ] all non-​Turkish speaking elements living in Turkey should be assimilated into Turkish culture” (Uzer 2016: 38). Nevertheless, even in the heyday of Kemalism, Islam could not be removed from the public sphere. No matter how top-​down an approach they embraced, even the Kemalist elites could not act in a vacuum and “had to fashion the new Turkish national identity in relation to their society” (Waxman 2000:  8). Rather than a total elimination of religion, what took place was the further Turkification of Islam (Yavuz 1998) under the auspices of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the minister of education at the time, Reşit Galip, who named the project Müslümanlık: Türk’ün Milli Dini (Islam: The National Religion of the Turk) (Cündioğlu 1998). To that end, in 1932, through an administrative order by the Diyanet, both the religious call to prayer, ezan, as well as the Friday sermons, started to be recited in Turkish instead of Arabic. In 1925, the parliament decided to fund a project to translate the Qur’an and the hadiths into Turkish (Wilson 2009). Undertaken first by Mehmet Akif Ersoy,8 later by Muhammed Hamdi Yazır “Elmalılı,” the project was finalized in 1932, and the Qur’an was recited in Turkish for the first time that year (see Azak 2010: 54–​58). In the same vein, Kemalist historiography tried to establish Turks as the real founders of Islamic civilization and the civilizers of Arabs, whom Republican elites deemed as backward and ignorant. To that end, at the 8 According to Wilson (2009: 429), Ersoy withdrew from the project in 1928 after the parliament eliminated the article in the constitution establishing Islam as the official religion of the state.

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  125 Second History Congress in 1937, philosopher and historian of religion İsmail Hakkı İzmirli suggested that Prophet Muhammad and one of his wives, as well as three of his companions, might have had Turkish lineage (Aktürk 2010:  638).9 Theologian İsmail Kara, author of the three-​volume Islamist Thought in Turkey and professor of Islamic philosophy, summarizes the underlying logic of this project as follows: Turks in Turkey have no histories outside of Islam and Muslims in Anatolia. For them it is Islam that is the constituent and sustaining element of their experience in Anatolia. The establishment elite that founded the Republican ideology was cognizant of this even when they sought to isolate Islam. [ . . . ] In Arab nationalist movements, Muslim Arabs and Christian Arabs were able to come together; it was also like this in Albanian nationalism. In Turkish nationalism, there was not a strong strand like this, and Muslim-​ness defined Turkishness. Outside of a few token, unconventional exceptions there is no basis to be found for a non-​Muslim Turkish national identity. Our national struggle was not a ‘national’ struggle, but a religious one; it was jihad. [ . . . ] Even in the period of secular politics that saw its most crude and lowest level during the Republican period, the elites facilitated the circulation of notions such as ‘Turkish Muslim identity’ (Türk Müslümanlığı), ‘Prophet Muhammad’s Turkishness’ (Hz. Muhammed’in Türklüğü), and ‘the Turkish Qur’an’ (Türkçe Kur’an) and allowed it to exist in official discourse. [ . . . ] In Turkey there is no other source of legitimacy that is as big or as encompassing as religion and Islam—​not even today. We must clearly understand and conceptualize this as a matter of fact that comes from historical experience. (Kara 2017) 10

Turkey’s Pending Dilemma: The Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis Against this background, a new period, marked by the move to multiparty democracy (1946–​1950), began. Both because of the political competition with the Democrat Party (DP) and the impending fear of communism and 9 For further information, see İsmail Hakkı İzmirli, “Peygamber ve Türkler [The Prophet and Turks],” in İkinci Türk Tarih Kongresi (İstanbul: Kenan Matbaası, 1943), 1013–​1027. 10 “Islam and Islamism in Turkey: A Conversation with Ismail Kara,” Maydan, October 24, 2017, https://​www.themaydan.com/​2017/​10/​islam-​islamism-​turkey-​conversation-​ismail-​kara/​ (retrieved November 15, 2019).

126  Under the Banner of Islam Soviet influence, the CHP, after 1946, initiated a public rapprochement with religion. The provision of funding for hajj to Mecca in 1947, the introduction of optional religion courses for fourth-​and fifth-​graders in 1949, the reopening of religious track vocational imam hatip schools (closed down in 1930) as imam hatip programs in 1947, and the almost twofold increase in the budget of the Diyanet in 1947 (Akan 2017) could all be evaluated as important signs of this rapprochement. Upon coming to power in 1950, the DP further increased the public visibility of religion. The reversal of the ezan from Turkish into Arabic and the opening of the Qur’an courses and the transformation of imam hatip programs into junior and senior high schools in 1950 (Kaplan 2002) buttressed the role of the DP as the guardian of religious values. The number of these schools, aiming to educate imams and preachers, increased to seven,11 with 2,476 students by 1958. Çetinsaya (1999) notes that imam hatip schools, along with the Ülkücü (Nationalist) youth movement—​ associated with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP)—​were the two main sources of the resurgence of the TIS in the 1970s. Embracing the milliyetçi-​ muhafazakar (nationalist-​conservative) ideas of Islamist and Turkist authors like Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, Necmettin Topçu, Peyami Safa, Yahya Kemal, and others, these two groups not only laid the ground for the flourishing of the TIS, but also shaped the contours of the Turkish right for years to come. Despite the military coup in 1960, which ousted the DP from power, religion still maintained its place in the political and public arena. In 1961 the Department of Religious Education was established within the Ministry of Education, and Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Enstitüsü (The Institute for the Exploration of the Turkish Culture) was founded. In 1970, the Institute started publishing its monthly journal Türk Kültürü (Turkish Culture), which was an effective tool in spreading the TIS (Copeaux 2000). That same year witnessed the establishment of Aydınlar Ocağı (Intellectuals’ Hearth) (Güvenç et  al. 1994)  where the TIS officially developed and flourished. Among the members of the Hearth were professors, bureaucrats, and politicans who promoted Islam and Turkishness as two equal elements of Turkish national identity (Mert 2002). In contrast to the ideologues of the Turkish History Thesis, who underlined the rupture between pre-​Islamic 11 While the number of imam hatip schools stood at 440 during the 2002–​2003 academic year, by 2019 that number had increased to 5,138 (with 1.3 million students). “Bir yılda 798 yeni imam hatip okulu açıldı, dini eğitim alan öğrenci sayısı 1.3 milyona ulaştı.” T24, October 26, 2019, https://​ t24.com.tr/​haber/​bir-​yilda-​798-​yeni-​imam-​hatip-​okulu-​acildi-​din-​egitim-​alan-​ogrenci-​sayisi-​1-​3-​ milyona-​ulasti,845477 (retrieved November 22, 2019).

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  127 and Islamic Turkish history, the three main ideologues of the TIS, Zeki Velidi Togan, Osman Turan, and İbrahim Kafesoğlu, saw the two histories as continuous and linear. Turan claimed that “Turkish states, in both periods, worked for the same goal of establishing Nizâm-​ı Âlem, the world order” (Balcı 2009: 97). They believed that this continuous Turkish culture brought about a unique Turkish understanding of Islam. It was at the 1969 congress of the pan-​Turkist Cumhuriyetçi Köylü Millet Partisi (Republican Peasants’ Nation Party), where Kafesoğlu challenged Alparslan Türkeş for the party leadership, that the TIS came to the fore. Although Kafesoğlu lost the race, his ideology won the day. Replacing its formerly pan-​Turkist ideology with the TIS, the party changed its name to Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (Nationalist Movement Party/​MHP) and its flag “from the grey wolf, a pre-​Islamic Turkish symbol, to three crescents, an Islamic symbol, over a red background. Furthermore, in this congress, Türkeş embraced the motto of TIS adherents: ‘we are as Turk as Tanrı Mountain, and as Muslim as Hira Mountain12’ ” (Balcı 2009: 100–​101). Ahmet Arvasi, an influential figure among the Ülkücüs of the MHP, formulated the approach as such: “Turkishness is our body, Islam is our soul” (Çetinsaya 1999: 372). Following the congress, in 1970, Kafesoğlu founded the Intellectuals’ Hearth, and started propagating the TIS as a solution to the increasing political polarization in the society at the time. In parallel with global politics, especially in the late 1960s, local politics in Turkey was characterized by serious clashes between left-​wing and right-​wing youth groups. Blaming Kemalist historiography for the popularity of socialism and Marxism, the TIS aimed to revive the fading centrality of Islam to Turkish nationalism, and to unify the divided masses around this synthesis. Due to the overlap between the anti-​communism of the state and the TIS ideologues, the TIS was able to find a place for itself in the education system. Especially after Kafesoğlu authored new history textbooks in 1976, the TIS began to dominate the education system (Copeaux 2000). Meanwhile, another right-​wing party, Necmettin Erbakan’s Milli Nizam Partisi (National Order Party/​MNP), was in the making in the early 1970s. After its closure in 1971, the party was succeeded by Milli Selamet Partisi (National Salvation Party/​MSP), which was closed down after the coup in

12 Tanrı Mountain is located in Central Asia, deemed as the original homeland of the Turks. Hira Mountain, located in Mecca, has a specific status in the history of Islam, as Prophet Muhammad is believed to have received the first Qur’anic verses in a cave in Hira Mountain.

128  Under the Banner of Islam 1981, only to be succeeded by Refah Partisi (Welfare Party/​RP), Fazilet Partisi (Virtue Party/​FP), and Saadet Partisi (Felicity Party/​SP). Defining his perspective as milli-​mukaddesatçı (nationalist-​sacredist), Erbakan differed from the MHP circles in that he was more Islamist and more anti-​Western. Still, in line with the TIS, his slogan in the 1969 election campaign was “to create a nationalist and sacredist Turkey” (Çetinsaya 1999: 373). According to Erbakan, the nation’s existence depended on a common national consciousness, a “national outlook” (milli görüş), which wove together religion, culture, history, and economics. Though he was not an active member of the Intellectuals’ Hearth, Erbakan collaborated with the TIS circles whenever their interests overlapped. The importance of Erbakan also stems from the fact that it was from the Welfare Party, and the “national outlook,” that Erdoğan and other founders of the AKP emerged. The intersection of Islamism and nationalism had important repercussions on the ground in the late 1970s. While the Sunni-​Muslim Ülkücüs of the MHP were responsible for the killing of more than 100 Alevi Muslims in Kahramanmaraş (in southern Anatolia) in 1978 and more than 50 Alevis in Çorum in 1980, Erbakan’s Islamists called for the establishment of shar‘ia in a pro-​Palestinian rally in Konya that same year (Eligür 2010). Finally, on September 12, 1980, the military, under the leadership of Kenan Evren, seized control and declared martial law. The generals who conducted the coup openly associated themselves with the TIS (Kaplan 2005). As these generals dominated official institutions and gained important positions in state administration, the TIS prospered in the public sphere. From 1983 on, the State Planning Office, the official organ in charge of the country’s five-​ year plans, instigated the waxing of religious values. In 1983, the “national culture report”—​aimed at state control on culture policy (Copeaux 2000)—​ postulated the three pillars of the Turkish-​Islamic synthesis as “the family, the mosque and the barracks” (Toprak 1999). Dominated by TIS followers, the State Planning Office integrated Islamic symbols to school curricula and continued using the history textbooks penned by Kafesoğlu. Along with the opening of 92 new imam-​hatip schools, the 1982 constitution introduced mandatory religious instruction in primary and secondary schools. Din Kültürü ve Ahlak Bilgisi (Religious Culture and Morals), a previously optional course, became obligatory (Kaplan 2002) and remains so even today. The Diyanet was another institution through which the TIS was consolidated. According to Diyanet’s own statistics, “the number of Qur’an schools rose from 2,610 in 1979–​80 to 4,715 in 1988–​89; the number of students at

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  129 these schools increased from 68,486 in 1980 to 155,403 nine years later: the number of imams appointed to mosques increased from 30,806 in 1981 to 50,814 in 1988; the number of licenced Qur’an teachers from 1,924 to 4,504 over the same period; the numbers of Turks making the hajj from 10,805 in 1979 to 92,006 in 1988; and the number of mosques throughout the country increasing from 54,667 in 1984 to nearly 65,000” (Salt 1995: 18). In addition to Kenan Evren, the most important name that made this Islamic revival possible was then Prime Minister Turgut Özal—​the leader of the Anavatan Partisi (Motherland Party), which came into power in 1983. Thanks to Özal—​a Naqshbandi-​Khalidi tariqah member—​several tariqahs like the Naqshbandis, Süleymancılar, and Nurcular started to prosper under the permissive eyes of the state. Özal died in 1993, four years after he was elected by the parliament as the president of Turkey. Yet, the victory of Erbakan’s RP in the 1994 local elections—​when Erdoğan, another Naqshbandi-​Khalidi sympathizer, was elected as the mayor of İstanbul—​the continuous existence of the MHP, as well as the MHP-​offshoot Büyük Birlik Partisi (Grand Union Party/​BBP), and the increasing influence of the Gülen movement in Turkish politics contributed to the perpetuation of the TIS. Although the “national outlook” parties (the RP, FP, and SP), Erdoğan, and Gülen all differed from each other in the amount of emphasis they put on Islam and Turkish national identity (see Aslan 2015 for the difference between the Turkish-​Islamism of AKP and that of the Gülenists), they all embraced some form of synthesis between the two. With other right-​wing parties also incorporating it into their discourse, the TIS has become mainstream in Turkish politics. Building on this background, I contend that it is the TIS that comes to life in the words of Turkish religious elites who promote an ethno-​religious approach. By providing a religious alternative to secular nationalism, the TIS gives the Turkish religious elites the opportunity to reject the supranational religious approach while still staying within the confines of an Islamic worldview. As such, the TIS, which originated to make more space for Islam in the Turkish political arena, ironically serves to make space for ethno-​nationalism in an increasingly Islamic Turkish political arena, and by doing so it prevents the further flourishing of Islam as a supranational identity. Hatice, one of my female Turkish intervieewes, to whose views about the Civil Friday Prayers I gave extensive space in Chapter 3, summarizes the issue as such: “Islam clearly and strongly prohibits nationalism but prioritizing Turkishness has never occurred to us, Muslim Turks, as a problem. For a long time, we have not realized that our Muslimness is stained with Turkish

130  Under the Banner of Islam nationalism. The current government mindset is the same; they do not realize that their Muslimness is tainted by Turkishness.” In the following section, I demonstrate how the TIS has influenced the discourse of the AKP, which has recently started to advocate Turkish nationalism with Islamic hues, rather than an Islamic solution to the Kurdish conflict.

AKP’s Transformation: “From ‘the Kurd’s Qur’an’ to ‘the Turk’s Flag’ ” On February 18, 2013, speaking about the peace process in Mardin, a Kurdish-​majority town in Turkey’s southeast, then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in line with his earlier statements, extoled supranationalism and said: “This is a resolution process. In this process, no one should come before us brandishing Kurdishness. No one should come before us brandishing Turkishness, either. We are a government that has trampled on all kinds of nationalism.”13 Yet, it was the same Erdoğan, who, on July 15, 2015, speaking in his capacity as president of Turkey, did not hesitate to give the following speech: Against those who want to “divide us,” we need national unity and integrity more than ever. Turks, Kurds, Laz, Circassians, Abkhazians, Georgians, all 78 million of us, we will be one and together, we will be big and strong, we will be siblings, we will be Turkey [ . . . ]. We will be one nation, we will have one flag, one homeland, one state. We’ll walk together. [ . . . ] We cannot have a second flag. “What makes a flag real is the blood on it, a territory becomes homeland only if there is someone dying for it.” We will never accept another homeland and another state in our 780.000 square meters.14

At first glance, in this speech, Erdoğan seems to be promoting an all-​ inclusive Sunni Muslim Turkish citizenship. However, upon a closer look, one realizes that, adorned with all the necessary symbols of Turkish nationalism—​ Turkish flag, Turkish homeland, Turkish nation, Turkish 13 “Erdoğan: Milliyetçilik ayak altında”, Hürriyet, February 18, 2013, http://​www.hurriyet.com.tr/​ erdoğan-​milliyetcilik-​ayak-​altinda-​22621388 (retrieved February 4, 2016). 14 “Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan: Bizi bölmek isteyenlere karşı birliğe çok ihtiyacımız var”, Hürriyet, July 16, 2015, http://​www.hurriyet.com.tr/​cumhurbaskani-​erdoğan-​bizi-​bolmek-​isteyenlere-​karsi-​ birlige-​cok-​ihtiyacimiz-​var-​29563039 (retrieved February 5, 2016).

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  131 state—​this speech promotes Turkish ethno-​nationalism over others. While in the first section of the speech Erdoğan refers to other Muslim minorities as essential components of the Turkish nation, in the second part, by emphasizing the flag and the homeland, and by quoting the last two lines of the Turkish nationalist poet Mithat Cemal Kuntay’s famous poem “Welcoming Fifteen Years” (Onbeş Yılı Karşılarken)—​written to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish Republic—​he makes quite clear that this is indeed a Turkish homeland. The allusion to the “blood of the martyrs”—​one of the best-​known expressions of the Turkish state in guaranteeing public support for its fight with the PKK—​completes Erdoğan’s Turkish nationalist stance. Coming only two months after the collapse of the peace process and only five days before the end of the ceasefire between the PKK and the TSK, this speech was indeed quite telling in that it was the precursor of what was to come: a return back to the militarist perspective in resolving the Kurdish conflict, accompanied with a radical Turkish nationalist rhetoric that still maintains an organic tie with Islam. Since then, clashes between the PKK and the TSK intensified, as did Erdoğan’s ethno-​nationalist speeches. Actually, it was not the first time Erdoğan employed this nationalist rhetoric. On May 17, 2011, at an election rally in Yozgat, he had asked: We said “one nation, one flag.” Why does the color of our flag disturb some people [alluding to the Kurds]? This color comes from the blood of our martyrs. The crescent on the flag symbolizes our independence; the star symbolizes our martyrs. This homeland was established with the blood of our martyrs, that is why we say there could only be one state on it. This flag symbolizes all 74 million of our people, this homeland is the homeland of 74 million.15

On the same day, in Malatya, he made a similar speech, addressed the PKK in an angry tone, and added: “You think you can raid a police station, kill two police officers and get away with it? You shall know that I will not let the blood of our martyrs stay on the ground, I will revenge my police officers, my martyrs in every possible way.”16 15 http://​www.gazetevan.com/​Basbakan-​Recep-​Tayyip-​Erdoğan-​Yozgat-​Mitinginde-​Konusuyor-​ Canli-​Izle-​17-​Mayis-​2011-​-​(Ayrintili-​Haber)-​35067.html (retrieved February 8, 2016). 16 “Erdoğan:  Şehidin kanı yerde kalmaz, kalmayacaktır”, T24, May 17, 2011, http://​t24.com.tr/​ haber/​arsiv,145761 (retrieved February 10, 2016).

132  Under the Banner of Islam Four years later, this nationalist rhetoric was to resurface once again. On March 15, 2015, only two weeks after the announcement of the “Dolmabahçe agreement,” Erdoğan declared that “there is no Kurdish problem” in Turkey.17 A week later, on March 22, 2015, he buried the peace process with the following words: It is our government that managed to do away with assimilation and denial policies. After the removal of these policies is it still possible to talk of a “Kurdish problem” in this country? Our Kurdish citizens might have problems, just like our Turkish citizens. However, there are some, who, by labeling the problem as [the] “Kurdish problem,” are just inviting more separatism. [ . . . ] The resolution process is not a process built only on the “Kurdish problem.” The process aims to put an end to the deaths all around the country, to put an end to the tears shed by mothers all around the country. The whole 78 million [are] a part to this process. All of our citizens contribute to this process. [ . . . ] What more do you [Kurds] want? Some newspapers write that they “want their children.” Well, your children might have died, but so did the children of the Turks. 40.000 people died in this country.18

I argue that the oscillations in Erdoğan’s speeches from an ethno-​nationalist position to an Islamist one and back exemplify very well the strength of the TIS in the Turkish political arena. While in some speeches Erdoğan refers to Islam as a unifying bond between Muslims in Turkey, in others he prioritizes Turkish identity over other identities. Ranging from a Hamidian interpretation of the TIS that prioritizes Islam to a more nationalist interpretation that prioritizes Turkishness, these oscillations demonstrate the continuing relevance of the TIS in present-​day Turkish politics. For example, in complete contrast to the Erdoğan of 2005 who deemed the Kurdish problem to be his own problem, the Erdoğan of 2015 refused to accept even the existence of such a problem. Similary, in complete contrast to the Erdoğan of 2005 who openly condemned ethno-​nationalism and declared Muslim identity to be

17 “Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan:  Kardeşim ne Kürt sorunu ya”, Hürriyet, March 15, 2015, http://​ www.hurriyet.com.tr/​cumhurbaskani-​erdoğan-​kardeşim-​ne-​kürt-​sorunu-​ya-​28457474 (retrieved February 4, 2016). 18 “Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan Ukrayna dönüşü konuştu: İzleme heyeti de Dolmabahçe toplantısı da yanlış,” Habertürk, March 22, 2015, http://​www.haberturk.com/​gundem/​haber/​1056503-​erdoğan-​ izleme-​heyeti-​de-​dolmabahce-​toplantisi-​da-​yanlis (retrieved February 7, 2016).

“Only Turks Can Lead a Muslim Union”  133 the only real bond connecting Kurds and Turks, the Erdoğan of 2011 would not shy away from speaking like a Turkish ultra-​nationalist. Writing for the daily Evrensel, in September 2015, Şenay Aydemir would describe this change of tone in Erdoğan’s discourse as follows: Erdoğan thought that pro-​election campaigning in Kurdish-​majority provinces with a [Kurdish] Qur’an in his hand would definitely have a positive effect on the Kurdish population, thought to be the most pious (but not the most conservative) group in the country. [ . . . ] What he couldn’t foresee is that imposing the dichotomy of “religion or ethnicity” on a people who have been involved in an identity struggle over four different countries in the Middle East and have lost several of their children to this end would easily backfire. Through the election results, the Kurdish people demonstrated their devotion to the Kurdish movement as well as their willingness to live together with the people of Turkey. Which is to say, “the Qur’an card” had failed to convince the Kurds. [ . . . ] Now, after June 7 elections, while the mountains are being bombed, the children are being killed and the war is once again the most important political issue, “the soldier” and “the flag” are being put on the political stage. [ . . . ] Kurdish people decided to act against those who wanted to establish their tyranny on them with the help of the Qur’an. Now, that tyranny is trying to be established by waving the flag to the Turks.19

This lengthy quote summarizes the change of gears in AKP’s policy in handling the Kurdish conflict. In the general elections held on June 7, 2015, the AKP experienced a considerable defeat in Kurdish-​majoity cities, where the HDP had a sweeping victory. While 46% of the Kurdish constituency had voted for the AKP in 2014 local elections, this number decreased to as low as 34% in the June 7 general elections in 2015 (Bayhan 2015).20 Upon realizing that his strategy of employing Islam and the Qur’an as a unifying bond with pious Kurds did not work, Erdoğan turned toward ethno-​nationalism and the Turkish flag in an attempt to gain the support of Turkish nationalists. Moreover, his fallout with the Gülen movement (which started in 2011 and 19 Şenay Aydemir, “Kürt’e Kuran olmadı, Türk’e bayrak verelim”, Evrensel, September 27, 2015, http://​w ww.evrensel.net/​haber/​261508/​kürte-​kuran-​olmadi-​turke-​b ayrak-​verelim (retrieved February 7, 2016). 20 Halil Bayhan, “7 Haziran Seçimleri, HDP ve Kürtlerin Dönüşümü”, Birikim, June 4, 2015, http://​ www.birikimdergisi.com/​guncel-​yazilar/​1229/​7-​haziran-​secimleri-​hdp-​ve-​kürtlerin-​donusumu#. VrsumVMrLeQ (retrieved February 10, 2016).

134  Under the Banner of Islam resulted in 2016 in a coup attempt allegedly led by the Gülenists) forced Erdoğan to forge new alliances. It was in the ultra-​nationalist MHP, and the Eurasianist, secular nationalist, anti-​Western Vatan Partisi (Homeland Party) that he found the allies needed to maintain his hold on the state. Since the 2016 Yenikapı Rally, held in the aftermath of the coup attempt, MHP has been acting as the unofficial coalition partner of the AKP. It supported Erdogan’s push for a constitutional change toward an all-​powerful presidential system in the 2017 referendum, and in 2018 general elections it formed an alliance with the AKP, under the name of “People’s Alliance.” With this alliance, Erdoğan’s discourse has become even more nationalist. According to Günay and Yörük (2019), this has translated into tangible gains for the AKP on the political scene as the party started receiving the votes of Turkish nationalists, which has so far made up for the drop in its voteshare among the Kurdish constitutency since the June 2015 elections.

Conclusion United in Religion, Divided by Ethnicity?

This book has its roots in the early 2000s. It was a tumultuous time: 9/​11 had just happened; secularization theory had just been pronounced dead by its very advocates (Berger 1999); the secularity of nationalism, accepted as a given, was being questioned by works on “religious nationalism” (Friedland 1999, 2001; Zubrzycki 2006); and social scientists were trying to make sense of the global revival of religion (Asad 2007)  and the “post-​secular” (Habermas 2008) direction in which the world was headed. Living in Turkey, where ethnicity, national identity, and religion have historically been inextricably intertwined and where the rise to power of the pro-​Islamist AKP in 2002 had brought about a visibly post-​secular turn, I found myself wondering about the mechanisms of identity formation, especially as they relate to religion and nationalism: How and why do people become nationalist or religious (or both)? Under what conditions do certain identity markers, such as religion and ethnicity, converge, and under what conditions do they diverge? What are the macro-​, meso-​, and micro-​level factors that bring about and explain these variations? With these questions in mind, I turned my attention to the interplay of religion and ethnicity in religiously homogenous ethnic conflicts, where there is a sharper clash of identities and where one’s loyalties and sense of belonging are constantly questioned. I  wondered, in a world marked by “post-​secularity” why does religion often fail to act as a conflict-​resolution tool in religiously homogeneous ethnic conflicts? Why is it that, despite its increasing influence and its Janus-​face as the carrier of not only particularist but also universalist identities (Casanova 1994: 4), religion’s appeal as a peacemaker is limited in such conflicts? To answer these questions, I  have turned my attention to the role of Sunni Islam as a supranational identity in the Kurdish conflict in Turkey, where religion was employed as a conflict-​resolution tool. In line with its Islamist worldview, the AKP promoted the idea that Islam, by acting as a Under the Banner of Islam. Gülay Türkmen, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197511817.003.0006.

136 Conclusion bridge between Sunni Muslim Turks and Kurds, could be a remedy for the 30-​year-​long Kurdish conflict in the country. Although this plan seemed to be working for a while, things became complicated when in 2011 some Kurdish clerics, affiliated with the Kurdish movement, started protesting Friday prayers led by state-​appointed imams, and organized, in their stead, Civil Friday Prayers that took place outside the mosques and were led by non-​state-​appointed imams who gave the Friday sermon not in Turkish, but in Kurdish. In Kurdish-​majority cities like Diyarbakır, Batman, and Şırnak, thousands of people attended these prayers. In İstanbul, they were banned. Although these prayers caused a crack in the “Muslim fraternity” project, attempts by both the AKP and some Kurdish actors at implementing “Islam as cement” continued. However, by the end of 2015 it was all too clear that the “Muslim fraternity” project has failed. After several years of ceasefire and peace negotiations, in the summer of 2015, the clashes between the Turkish security forces and the PKK escalated, causing hundreds of civilian deaths and total destruction in Kurdish-​majority cities in southeastern and eastern Anatolia. It was in the wake of the Civil Friday Prayers, before the collapse of the peace process, that I conducted my research in the region. Intrigued by these prayers, I narrowed my research question to the Turkish case and asked the following: If globalization and blurring boundaries have led to an increase in the likelihood of an ummah and if Muslim identity has been spotlighted as “cement” by both the AKP and the Kurdish movement for the last decade, why has Islam not been able to act as a supranational identity in Turkey that could suppress the ethnic divide between the predominantly Sunni Muslim Turks and Kurds? To answer this question I have relied mainly on 62 in-​depth interviews I  conducted with Turkish and Kurdish religious elites in Diyarbakır, Batman, and İstanbul between June 2012 and July 2013. Combining interview data with field notes from participant observation in Friday prayers, and systematic analysis of newspaper articles and secondary sources, I looked at why religious identity cannot bridge the ethnic divides, even among the religious elites with the same sectarian identity. My findings have revealed that one of the main reasons why Sunni Islam fails to unite Turkish and Kurdish Sunni Muslim elites is the variation in how these elites conceptualize religious and ethnic identities. Almost all religious elites I talked with agree that Islam can be implemented as a conflict-​resolution tool. Yet, because they diverge in their interpretations of Islamic teachings and in their conceptualizations

Conclusion  137 of religious and ethnic identities, Islam plays much less an influential role as a peacemaker. To demonstrate this divergence among Turkish and Kurdish religious elites, based on my findings, I have put forward a fourfold typology of identity categories as conceived by these elites:  (1) religio-​ethnic; (2)  ethno-​ religious; (3) religious; and (4) secular-​ethnic. Using this fourfold typology, I have first demonstrated that Islam is envisioned as a unifying identity only by a handful of elites who embrace the “religious” category. These elites, who deploy ethnic boundary blurring, accept the implementation of Muslim fraternity as a conflict-​resolution tool in the Kurdish conflict and yearn for a Muslim ummah that would overcome any divide between Kurds and Turks. To understand where this belief emanates from, I  undertook a detailed survey of the emergence and evolution of the concept of ummah in Islamic history, and demonstrated that Muslim unity, as envisioned by these elites, has been no more than a utopian goal. The majority of religious elites I interviewed disagree with this first group of elites, though. In line with previous works highligthing the importance of ethnicity, I have found that most Muslim Turkish elites embrace an ethno-​ religious (Turkish-​Muslim) identity that advocates Muslim fraternity but prioritizes Turkish ethnic identity. Because they hierarchically order ethnic identities and privilege “Turkishness,” their preference for Turkish identity overrules their preference for a supranational Muslim identity. I  have contended that the roots of such an approach lie in the Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis, which has not only contributed to the consolidation of Islam among Turkish nationalists but also buttressed the strength of nationalism among Muslim Turks. Via a detailed historical narrative, I have demonstrated that the convergence of Islam and Turkishness goes back as early as the late Ottoman period, and despite the emphasis put on the narrative of “assertive secularism” (Kuru 2009) of Republican elites, it can be spotted even in the early Republican period, in the form of the Turkification of Islam. This continuous merger of Islam with Turkishness has paradoxically prevented the supranational religious discourse from resonating further among Turkish religious elites. There is, however, another equally important—​but overlooked—​reason for the limited appeal of Islam as a supranational identity in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict, I have argued: the autonomy of religious identity in the face of ethnicity, and the tendency of some Muslim Kurdish elites to see their ethnicity as a God-​given, immutable identity. Thinking that ethnic diversity is an

138 Conclusion attestation to God’s will, most of these elites embrace what I call a religio-​ ethnic (Muslim-​Kurdish) identity that traces the very existence of Kurdish identity to Islam. They accept religion’s unifying characteristic, but they are unwilling to accept the implementation of Sunni Islam as a conflict-​ resolution tool as they believe that the government (mis)interprets religious teachings in a way that would serve its own purposes. Deploying Islam as a tool of resistance, they advocate an alternative understanding of Islam that justifies and endorses ethnic differences rather than suppressing them. In their mind, Islamic teachings do not ask Muslims to privilege religious identity; rather, ethnic identity derives from religious identity, and it is why any “real” Muslim should respect the ethnic affiliations of others. In response to AKP’s attempt to blur ethnic boundaries, they implement boundary contraction that differentiates between Muslim Kurds and Muslim Turks. These findings are of great help in understanding the role of religion in conflict-​ resolution processes, particularly because the interviews were conducted during a period when the peace process seemed to be moving smoothly and when co-​religiosity seemed to be quite influential in bridging the ethnic divide between Kurds and Turks, at least rhetorically. The interview data reveal that, in fact, Sunni Muslim identity was far from influential in uniting religious elites at the time, let alone motivating them to advocate for “Muslim fraternity.” Keeping in mind the importance of religious elites in shaping their communities’ worldview, it could be concluded that religious elites should not be taken for granted as peacemakers in religiously homogeneous ethnic conflicts as they are not immune to the “ambivalence of the sacred” and they differ in the ways they interpet religious teachings and in their approaches to religion as a unifying identity. While the different conceptualizations of ethnic and religious identities by Sunni Muslim Turkish and Kurdish elites definitely play an important role in preventing their unification under the umbrella of Sunni Islam, it would be misleading to claim that it is the only reason that has hindered the deployment of religion as a peacemaker in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict. As identity categories do not exist in a vacuum and they are historically and politicially grounded, I have contended that related structural factors should also be taken into consideration when discussing this issue.1 The historical trajectories of both Kurdish and Turkish nationalisms in Turkey (as shown in Chapters 1 and 4, respectively); changes in the religious and 1 See Özpek 2017 for the role of structural factors in the failure of the peace process.

Conclusion  139 political fields since the AKP’s rise to power in early 2000s (as demonstrated in Chapter 3); the non-​transparent nature of the peace talks and the continuous mistrust between the government and the Kurdish movement; the vital role played by secular nationalist actors both in the Kurdish movement and in some segments of the Kurdish and Turkish society; the importance of Alevi Kurds in certain Kurdish-​majority regions and in the upper echelons of the Kurdish movement; HDP’s decision to not support Erdoğan’s bid for presidency; and, last but not least, the spillover effects of the civil war in Syria (see Arslan 2019) (especially the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region—​Rojava—​in northern Syria2) are among the factors that have contributed to the termination of the peace process in the summer of 2015. In such an environment, it was quite hard for Sunni Islam to act as the “cement” it was envisioned to be. As such, I  have claimed, religion’s failure as a unifying identity in the Kurdish conflict can only be explained by a comprehensive theory that bridges macro-​level analysis of structural factors with meso-​level analysis of mechanisms and actors (e.g., religious elites and how theological content might be shaped in their hands) and micro-​level analysis of identity-​ formation processes. Rather than presupposing the “religiosity” of religious elites and emphasizing the impact of macro-​ level causal mechanisms, conflict-​resolution scholars could start paying more attention to meso-​and micro-​level factors such as identity formation, symbolic boundary making, and the interpretation of religious texts. Sociological works on identity formation and boundary making, on the other hand, could benefit from a more nuanced approach to ethnic and religious identities that would stop grouping them under the rubric of ethnicity as they diverge in certain contexts and converge to produce hyphenated identities in others. Although this is a single-​case study, it could serve as a departure point to develop an insightful theory regarding the formation of religious and ethnic identities in religiously homogeneous ethnic conflicts, as well as the categorization of the possible interactions between the two. For example, future research could focus on the relationship between Catholicism and ethnicity in the Basque conflict. Under that rubric, scholars could explore the role that Catholic religious elites have played in the conflict and whether 2 Arslan (2019) recounts that according to Beşir Atalay, who was one of the leading state representatives during the peace talks, the negotiations would have resulted positively if it weren’t for the developments in Syria. See Atalay’s full statement at:  http://​www.aljazeera.com.tr/​al-​jazeera-​ozel/​ atalay-​suriye-​olmasaydi-​surec-​hedefe-​ulasirdi (retrieved January 9, 2020).

140 Conclusion there is a Catholic counterpart to the notion of ethnicity as a God-​given identity (or whether other religious traditions lend themselves to similar conceptualizations of ethnicity and religious identity). Such a comparison would give us more information about the details of identity formation in ethnically heterogeneous, religiously homogeneous groups, which in turn would prepare the ground for a more generalizable theory of identity formation, as well as of conflict resolution. Future studies could also turn their attention to Kurds in Iraq, Iran, and Syria and undertake comparative research projects to see whether the religo-​ ethnic versus ethno-​religious distinction I offer in this book still holds true in these countries where Kurds constitute a sizable minority. They could also inquire whether and how the religious and ethnic identity-​formation processes in those countries resemble or differ from that in Turkey and to what extent country-​specific factors and the existence/​lack of an armed conflict influence that process. These questions become especially important when one takes into consideration the recent political developments in the region, which has led some commentators to suggest that cross-​border Kurdish national unity is now more likely than it was in earlier decades (Barkey 2019). Another venue this study might contribute to is the present-​day debate about a possible “sectarian redrawing of the Middle Eastern map” 3 in which scholars and policymakers, pointing to the increasing importance of sectarian identities in countries like Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria, and to the emergence of fundamentalist sectarian groups like ISIS, claim that the boundaries of Middle Eastern countries will be redrawn along sectarian lines, be it a Shi‘a Crescent (Nasr 2006) or a Sunni Caliphate. This study repudiates this argument by showing that sectarian identities, by themselves, are insufficient in bringing together ethnically heterogeneous groups.4 As such, it is advisable that policymakers pay more attention to the nuances in identity formation as well as to structural factors like power relations and institutional changes in political and religious fields if they are to come up with more efficient and long-​term solutions for ethnic conflicts.

3 For an elaborate discussion of how sectarianism in the Middle East is not a home-​grown problem but has been triggered by Western involvement, see Gary Leupp’s article, “The US Is Now Confronted by the Same Sectarian Strife in the Middle East That It Fostered,” Counter Punch, July 9, 2015, http://​ www.counterpunch.org/​2015/​07/​09/​the-​us-​is-​now-​confronted-​by-​the-​same-​sectarian-​strife-​in-​ the-​middle-​east-​that-​it-​fostered/​ (retrieved March 6, 2016). 4 Tezcür and Asadzade (2019), however, find that among Iranian Kurds sectarian affiliation plays an important role in ethnic mobilization, as Sunni Kurds exhibit greater support to Kurdish insurgency in Iran than Shi‘a Kurds.

Conclusion  141

The Way Forward: Whither Kurdish Conflict? When I was conducting research for this book in southeastern Anatolia back in 2012 and 2013, there was hope in the air. Many locals I talked to were cautiously optimistic; they believed that the conflict was finally coming to an end. That hope has long been replaced by despair and there is still no end in sight for this “never-​ending conflict.” Since the collapse of the peace process in June 2015, the situation in Kurdish-​majority provinces in Turkey has only been deteriorating. Immediately after the peace talks halted, in the summer of 2015, the PKK, likely emboldened by the victory of the YPG (People’s Protection Units) against ISIS in the Battle of Kobanî5 in northern Syria and by the HDP’s electoral success in Turkey, called for unilateral declarations of autonomous self-​rule in Kurdish-​majority cities and towns. Departing from its traditional rural guerrilla-​style warfare, it carried the war to the cities by stationing militias in urban areas. Composed mainly of the PKK’s youth wing YDG-​H (The Patriotic Revolutionary Movement), these forces dug trenches and built barricades reinforced with explosives to prevent the TSK’s access to unilaterally “autonomous” urban zones. In December 2015, more trained PKK fighters started joining the ranks of the YDG-​H, which was now renamed as YPS (Civil Defense Units). The Turkish government responded heavy-​handedly to the PKK’s declaration of self-​rule and its adoption of urban warfare (see Konaev and Kadercan 2018 for a detailed report on this issue).6 Between July and November 2015 it deployed armored army units, as well as special operations teams of the police and the gendarmerie in the region. In some cities and neighborhoods (e.g., Cizre, Idil, Silopi, and Sur) heavy fighting ensued. The transformation of the YDG-​H into YPS brought about the implementation of new tactics, such as snipers and roadside bombs, which in turn increased the fatalities of the Turkish forces. In response, additional troops and the Turkish Air Force were deployed. Cities and towns where PKK forces were suspected to be stationed were besieged and hit by bombs, and in some cases, buildings in residential areas were pummeled by heavy artillery, with civilians trapped 5 For more on the link between the YPG and the PKK, and the impact of Kurdish autonomy in Syria on the peace process in Turkey, see the Crisis Group report entitled “The PKK’s Fateful Choice in Northern Syria,” https://​www.crisisgroup.org/​middle-​east-​north-​africa/​eastern-​mediterranean/​ syria/​176-​pkk-​s-​fateful-​choice-​northern-​syria (accessed January 11, 2020). 6 Margarita Konaev and Burak Kadercan, “Old Dogs, New Tricks: Urban Warfare in Turkey’s War with the PKK,” War on the Rocks, January 3, 2018, https://​warontherocks.com/​2018/​01/​old-​dogs-​ new-​tricks-​urban-​warfare-​turkeys-​war-​pkk/​ (accessed January 11, 2020).

142 Conclusion inside.7 After a year of fighting, urban warfare came to an end. In June 2016, the PKK retreated from its last stronghold (in Nusaybin) and the conflict’s center shifted once again to rural areas. The cost of urban warfare was quite heavy. According to the Turkish Human Rights Association,8 between August 16, 2015, and January 1, 2020, the government imposed at least 381 indefinite or daylong curfews in 11 cities and 51 towns in southeastern Anatolia. The International Crisis Group9 estimates that, between July 20, 2015, and January 9, 2019, at least 4,783 people were killed, including 489 civilians, with the number of fatalities peaking in the winter of 2015–​2016. As a result of the destruction of homes and neighborhoods, and the emergency expropriation decisions (that involved the expropriation of 22 parcels of land in Cizre and 6,292 parcels of land in Sur10), 350,000–​500,000 people were displaced by 2017.11 According to the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights, humanitarian assistance to internally displaced people has been very limited (and in most cases, it has been conditioned on having a clean criminal record, disregarding basic humanitarian principles). While urban clashes ended in June 2016, the two-​year emergency rule declared in the wake of the coup attempt in July 2016 contributed to the continuation of the crackdown on Kurdish oppositional voices. In November 2016, 12 HDP parliamentarians, including the party co-​ chairs Figen Yüksekdağ and Selahattin Demirtaş, were imprisoned on charges of “terrorist propaganda.”12 According to a report issued by the HDP in December 2019,13 since July 2016, 10,719 HDP members were detained and 2,251 were jailed. In the aftermath of the March 2019 local elections, between August 7 The most infamous casualties took place in three residential basements in Cizre, where 189 residents were killed by Turkish Armed Forces. See the UN OHCHR Southeast Turkey Report, published on March 10, 2017:  https://​www.ohchr.org/​EN/​NewsEvents/​Pages/​DisplayNews. aspx?NewsID=21342 (accessed January 11, 2020). 8 See the full report at: https://​tihv.org.tr/​16-​agustos-​2015-​1-​ocak-​2020-​tarihleri-​arasinda-​ilan-​ edilen-​sokaga-​cikma-​yasaklari/​ (accessed January 11, 2020). 9 See the details at:  https://​www.crisisgroup.org/​content/​turkeys-​pkk-​conflict-​visual-​explainer (accessed January 10, 2020). Note that the Crisis Group treats the 226 people killed in residential neighborhoods as “individuals of unknown affiliation” and does not include them among the civilian casualties. 10 Numbers taken from Ronay Bakan, “Recalling Turkey’s Peace Process,” YaleGlobal Online, December 27, 2018, https://​yaleglobal.yale.edu/​content/​recalling-​turkeys-​peace-​process (accessed January 11, 2020). 11 Estimates taken from the previously mentioned UN OHCHR report (see footnote 7). 12 As of December 2019, seven HDP parliamentarians, including Yüksekdağ and Demirtaş, are behind the bars. 13 See the full report at:  https://​www.hdp.org.tr/​tr/​guncel/​haberler/​2019-​yili-​hak-​ihlalleri-​ raporumuz/​13804 (accessed January 11, 2020).

Conclusion  143 and December 2019, 17 HDP co-​mayors were jailed and 28 HDP mayors were replaced by government-​appointed trustees. These numbers rise to 93 and 84, respectively, if one is to include all imprisonments and replacements since July 2015. Meanwhile, the impact of Syrian civil war on Turkey’s Kurdish conflict only kept growing. In January 2018, Turkey and Turkish-​backed Syrian militias, including the Free Syrian Army (FSA), launched an assault on the Syrian city of Afrin, to expel Kurdish YPG forces, who led the fight against ISIS in the region, and to prevent the unification of Kurdish enclaves along Turkey’s border, separated, at the time, by a strip of ISIS territory. Deeming a Kurdish-​controlled autonomous region in northern Syria a “national security threat,” the Turkish government seeked to establish a “safe-​zone” without Kurds. After the YPG-​led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured the last pocket of ISIS territory in March 2019, the issue gained more traction. In October 2019, with approval from the United States, which agreed to withdraw its forces from the area, Turkey started a unilateral operation to set up a “safe-​zone” in northern Syria. Abandoned by the United States, Kurdish forces turned to Bashar al-​Assad (and Russia) for help for the first time in the eight-​year-​long civil war. According to the ensuing truce, Turkish forces gained control of a 120-​kilometer strip of territory they had captured along the Syria-​Turkey border, and Russian and Syrian troops were given the control of the remaining boder territory. YPG forces were asked to pull back at least 30 kilometers from the border.14 Against this background, the prospects of a return back to peace negotiations seem quite grim. The widespread societal silence15 to civilian fatalities and the destruction of residential neighborhoods in urban clashes, and the nationalist discourse adopted during the Turkish offensives in Syria, have served to widen the emotional gap between Turks and Kurds. Meanwhile, the government and the Kurdish movement have been maintaining a distant,

14 See the details at: https://​www.bbc.com/​news/​world-​middle-​east-​49963649 (accessed January 11, 2020). 15 A notable exception to this silence is the petititon, “We will not be a party to this crime,” signed by over 2,000 academics from Turkey to protest indiscriminate state violence in Kurdish-​majority cities in January 2016. After the petition was made public, hundreds of academics affiliated with Turkish universities were dismissed from their jobs, discharged from public service, forced to resign or retire, and their passports were revoked. Around 450 academics were tried and found guilty of “terrorist propaganda” in court cases between 2017 and 2019 (see Sertdemir Özdemir et al. 2019 for details). In July 2019, the Constitutional Court judged that prison sentences given to academics violate freedom of expression and should be overturned. As of January 2020, acquitted Academics for Peace have still not been able to return to duty.

144 Conclusion at times hostile, relationship. The one glimpse of hope in this gloomy picture is that the conflict has, miraculously, not taken an intercommunal nature.16 While increasing authoritarianism in Turkey and the ever-​changing dynamics in Syria render the future even more unpredictable, it is advisable that the parties go back to the negotiating table when there is still some (albeit shaky) common ground for agreement. After all, if this conflict is ever to come to an end, it will be through peace talks rather than further militarization. As put by Jonathan Powell—​the chief British negotiator in the Northern Ireland peace process—​“negotiation is the only way to peace” (2015) and “it is a question of when, not whether, you talk.”17 One can only hope that Turkey will lend an ear to Powell sooner rather than later. Over the last four decades, Kurds and Turks in Turkey have had their fare share of death and destruction; the last thing they need is more conflict. Rather, they need political actors who will not shy away from undertaking a transparent peace process, accompanied by necessary steps toward democratization and decentralization, to create a more inclusive, just, and egalitarian country. Whether, and to what extent, religion will play a role in that process, only time will tell.

16 Note, however, the increase in hate crimes against Kurdish citizens in the wake of Turkey’s latest offensives into Syria. For details, see “Are Racist Attacks against Kurds in Turkey on the Rise?” Deutsche Welle, October 18, 2019, https://​www.dw.com/​tr/​t%C3%BCrkiyede-​k%C3%BCrtlere-​ y%C3%B6nelik-​%C4%B1rk%C3%A7%C4%B1-​sald%C4%B1r%C4%B1lar-​art%C4%B1yor-​mu/​a-​ 50893080 (retrieved January 13, 2020). 17 Jonathan Powell, “How to Talk to Terrorists,” The Guardian, October 7, 2014, https://​www. theguardian.com/​world/​2014/​o ct/​07/​-​sp-​how-​to-​talk-​to-​terrorists-​isis-​al-​qaida#maincontent (retrieved January 13, 2020).

APPENDIX

Methodology The findings presented in this book mainly derive from 62 in-​depth, semi-​structured, open-​ended interviews with Kurdish and Turkish religious elites, conducted in İstanbul and in two Kurdish-​majority cities, Diyarbakır and Batman, in southeastern Anatolia, between June 2012 and July 2013. In addition to the interviews, I used systematic analysis of newspaper articles, and secondary sources, to track the transformation of AKP policies regarding the Kurdish conflict, as well as to explore the secular Kurdish political elites’ stances on Islam as a conflict-​resolution tool. Last but not least, I utilized participant observation in Civil Friday Prayers as an auxiliary method for data gathering. “Religious elites” in this study include Turkish and Kurdish clerics (imams and meles), as well as heads of religious NGOs, and members of certain religious orders (tariqah). In Turkey, all imams are civil servants appointed by the Diyanet. However, in the Kurdish region, in addition to the state-​appointed imams, there are also non-​state-​appointed, madrasa-​trained imams (meles) whose salaries are paid by the locals. Albeit illegally, these meles work alongside state-​appointed imams, and, especially in rural areas, they are shown more respect as religious authorities than state-​appointed imams. In an attempt to draw as complete a picture as possible, I interviewed both state-​appointed and non-​state-​appointed Kurdish imams in Diyarbakır and Batman, and state-​appointed Turkish imams in İstanbul. While some respondents were members of certain NGOS, a few were members of political parties and unions, and some did not have any institutional affiliations. All but two of my respondents are men aged 30 and over. These respondents were not known to me and were chosen by snowball sampling. I  received the initial contacts from two İstanbul-​based journalists who have acquaintances in Diyarbakır and Batman. While I did not directly inquire about the ethnic background of my respondents (as such a question would not be well received) I could usually (but not always) tell by their accents if they were of Kurdish or Turkish origin. In cases where the accent did not give it away, I asked them where they were from (which in Turkey would be read as “where your family is from”) to figure out their ethnic identity. Out of 62 respondents, 18 are Turkish while 44 are Kurdish. Kurdish respondents outnumber Turkish respondents as Kurdish meles are the ones who publicly resisted the AKP’s Muslim fraternity project by undertaking the Civil Friday Prayers. (This is not to single out Kurdish meles as the only religious elites reluctant to embrace Sunni Islam as a conflict-​resolution tool. To the contrary, as I discuss in Chapter 4, my interviews with Turkish religious elites have revealed that “Turkishness” is yet another obstacle in the establishment of “Sunni Muslim unity.”) Because this study was not designed for quantitative analysis, it does not claim to have a statistically representative sample. Religious elites were chosen as main units of analysis for various reasons: (1) As demonstrated by previous studies (Smith 1978; Hastings 1997; Stewart 2009), religious elites play a vital role in ethnic and national identity formation. As “ethnic entrepreneurs,” they not only contribute to the creation of ethno-​national identities (Brass 1991) but also politicize and mobilize them (Lecours 2000). (2)  They are expected to be much more knowledgeable about sacred texts than laypeople. (3) Because they are the ones to convey

146 Appendix: Methodology religious teachings to lay people, their interpretation of these teachings matter immensely in understanding how and why religious identity fails to act as a unifier. (4) As shown by the Civil Friday Prayers, religious elites are quite important agents in conflict mediation. Moreover, as I have demonstrated in Chapter 3 and as elaborated by Talal Asad (1993), they have the opportunity to politically mobilize their jamaat via the Friday sermon.

Interviews Before starting to conduct the main interviews in June 2012, I  carried out two pilot interviews in İstanbul in January 2012 with two devout Muslim supporters of the Kurdish movement. Both were local members of the BDP. However, in contrast to the leader cadres of the party who have only recently started to highlight religion as part of Kurdish identity, these two members came from religious backgrounds and highlighted their Muslim identity very strongly. They referenced the Qur’an and the hadiths several times in explaining their support for Kurdish nationalism. Thus, their perception of the Kurdish movement was quite different from that of the secular-​nationalist supporters of the movement. These two semi-​structured interviews conducted with the local BDP members helped me reframe and reformulate the questions I used in future interviews. I did not include in the study the data I gathered from these interviews. Apart from these interviews, I  also managed to talk with two well-​known Turkish journalists who have researched and written extensively on the role of Islam in the formation of Kurdish identity. The journalists put me in touch with their acquaintances in the region. These interviews were very helpful in acquiring contact information of potential future respondents and of prominent Muslim community leaders/​religious figures in southeastern Anatolia as well as in İstanbul. I first got in touch with non-​state-​appointed Kurdish imams (meles) who led Civil Friday Prayers, who are sympathetizers of the Kurdish movement and promote a religio-​ ethnic approach that traces Kurdishness to Islam. I  then interviewed state-​appointed Kurdish imams who, while also embracing the religio-​ethnic approach, mostly stay aloof to the Kurdish movement. In order to make internal comparisons, I  also interviewed state-​appointed Turkish imams who, like the state-​ appointed Kurdish imams, stay aloof to the Kurdish movement but embrace an ethno-​religious approach that glorifies Turkishness. Lastly, I interviewed members of certain religious NGOs and religious orders that did not have any ties with either the Diyanet or the Kurdish movement. The NGOs I was in touch with in Diyarbakır and Batman are DİAY-DER, Ay-​Der, Özgür-​ Der, Azadi, Mazlum-​Der, and Nûbihar/​Zehra Vakfı. The religious orders whose members I interviewed are the Menzil, the Mevlevis, the Gülenists, and the Qadiris. I also attempted to interview members of Mustazaf-​Der (affiliated with the Kurdish Hizbullah); however, despite my repeated attempts, they refused to talk to me (because of my gender). In addition to religious elites, I also interviewed two secular Kurdish politicians (political elites) who were members of the BDP/​HDP at the time. Although I do not count them among my main sources of data, I make use of and quote from these interviews in Chapter 1. Yet, the remaining data for that chapter come from secondary sources and systematic analysis of newspapers. Most interviews lasted between one and two hours, and were conducted in a place of the respondent’s choice. While most of them were one-​on-​one interviews, upon respondents’ request some took place in a group of two to four people. All interviews were conducted

Appendix: Methodology  147 in Turkish. Although most of the respondents were Kurdish, they all spoke Turkish fluently, as it is the official language of education in Turkey. During the interviews my main concern was to make sure that the respondents trusted me, as I was an “outsider” on many levels (e.g., Turkish, agnostic, female). To my surprise, establishing trust did not turn out to be as hard as I thought it was going to be. While many respondents seemed suspicious of my questions at the beginning of the interview and wanted to learn “where in Turkey I am from,” “why I am interested in this particular topic if I am not Kurdish,” and “who pays for this research,” after the first 15 minutes or so, which I spent explaining the details of the research project and my motives for conducting it, they started answering my questions much more genuinely. They would usually express this trust by thanking me for “coming all the way from the United States to listen to what they have to say.” All but six of the interviews were digitally recorded with the permission of the respondents and were fully transcribed and translated into English. After the transcription process I employed open coding and started to look for patterns in interview transcripts. In coding the answers, I mainly focused on how my respondents interpret Qur’anic teachings on ethnicity and nationalism (especially which verses and hadiths they refer to), whether they think Islam and ethno-​nationalism are compatible (why/​why not), their take on the Kurdish movement, the Civil Friday Prayers and the demand to be able to pray in Kurdish, and whether they believe that Islam can be a peace-​building tool in this conflict. In the final round of coding, I categorized the responses in four groups: religio-​ ethnic, ethno-​religious, religious, and secular-​ethnic approaches to Islam and ethnicity (see Table I.1 in the Introduction).

Participant Observation and Discourse Analysis In addition to the interviews, I  also employed participant observation (Jorgensen 1989) in Civil Friday Prayers, and discourse analysis of speeches by Erdoğan and by secular Kurdish political elites as auxiliary methods. As a participant observer, I attended Civil Friday Prayers in Batman and Diyarbakır. Friday prayers have usually a men-​only jamaat in Turkey; yet, because Civil Friday Prayers were conducted in the streets, no one questioned my presence. Through the observation of these prayers I was able to see how politics, ethnicity, and nationalism mingle in a religious setting and what tensions arise between the participants of the Civil Friday Prayers and the undercover police officers recording the prayers. Also, participating in these prayers gave me the opportunity to interview some of the attendants about why they attend these prayers but not the regular ones. Even though I did not include these short interviews in the study, they were of great help in understanding the mindset of Kurdish Muslims who favor the Kurdish movement. In addition to participant observation, I scrutinized Erdoğan’s speeches, to bring to light the details of AKP policies regarding the Kurdish conflict as well as Kurdish and Turkish identities. Analyzing newspaper reports of public statements, I  demonstrated the narratives exemplifying both the “supranational religious approach” and “the ethno-​ religious approach.” I relied primarily on the daily newspapers Hürriyet, Milliyet, Radikal, Sabah,1 Cumhuriyet, and the online portals Habertürk, T24, and Bianet. Supplementing 1 Sabah, Milliyet, and Hürriyet (all centrist dailies) changed hands under the AKP rule and are now owned by pro-​AKP conglomerates. In 2016, the Doğan Media Group closed down the center-​left Radikal, which had been in publication since 1996.

148 Appendix: Methodology this analysis with secondary literature, I paid specific attention to the narratives used by Erdoğan in conceptualizing ethnicity, Turkish national identity, and religious identity.

Case Selection and Limitations Because this study is mainly interested in the role of supranational religious traditions as unifying identities in ethnic conflicts, the most ideal way of dealing with this question would have been a cross-​case analysis of all ethnic conflicts taking place between religiously homogeneous ethno-​nationalist groups. However, because of time and language restrictions, I have limited myself to an in-​depth analysis of the role of Sunni Islam as a supranational identity in the Kurdish conflict in Turkey. Contrary to many ethnic conflicts taking place between Muslim groups, Kurdish conflict does not involve any sectarian difference as both Kurds and Turks are predominantly Sunni Muslims. Hence, one can inquire about the relationship between ethnicity, nationalism, and religion, while holding religious identity constant. An important caveat to note here is that about 15% of the Kurdish population in Turkey is estimated to be Alevis, and Kurdish Alevis are thought to comprise 15% of the overall Alevi population in Turkey (Gezik 2014). Yet, I consciously left Kurdish Alevis out of the scope of this book, as my research question (“to what extent Islam can act as a unifying identity between Sunni Muslim Kurds and Sunni Muslim Turks”) required me to hold sectarian identity constant.2 A significant limitation here is that while the majority of Sunni Kurds belong to the Shafi‘i school of Islamic jurisprudence, the majority of Sunni Turks are Hanafis. Yet, when I asked my interlocutors about this difference, they told me that it does not influence their interpretations of theological teachings; rather, they argued, the difference between Shafi‘is and Hanafis translates more into differences in rituals. (Note, however, Sarıgil and Fazlıoğlu’s [2014] argument that Sunni Kurds who are Hanafi are less receptive to Kurdish nationalism than Sunni Kurds who are Shafi‘i.) One of the main concerns about single-​case studies is the issue of “generalizability.” As both Weber (2011) and Durkheim (1982) make clear, at the heart of sociology as a scientific enterprise lie comparisons. Following in their suit, Rueschemeyer claims, “cross-​ case analyses are critical for understanding variations in macrophenomena” (2003: 332). While I definitely find this approach valid, I also think that this worry is mitigated by the fact that a single-​case study’s capability to generalize “is never claimed by its exponents; in fact it is often explicitly repudiated” (Eckstein 1975: 134). That is to say, in no way do I intend to employ an approach that would generalize my findings beyond the Turkish case and produce a law-​like theoretical framework. As I make clear in the Conclusion, I believe these findings might be of help in understanding similar cases, but they could definitely not be generalized without further research on those cases. Another criticism against single-​case studies is that these cases are not suitable for “statistical generalization” that would help test theories. However, the utility of single-​case studies for “analytical generalization” with the aim of theory building is well documented. As Gerring puts it, “theory confirmation/​disconfirmation is not the case study’s strong suit” (2004:  350), but theory building is. Based on the “grounded theory” tradition (Glaser and Strauss 1967), single-​case studies let theory emerge inductively rather than 2 Please see Bruinessen (1997) and Leezenberg (2003) for a more detailed discussion on the ethnic identity of the Kurdish Alevis, and their ambiguous relationship with the Kurdish movement.

Appendix: Methodology  149 deductively (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; Burawoy 2009; Eliasoph and Lichterman 1999). In this vein, it would not be wrong to label my research as an example of “abductive analysis” that “constitutes a qualitative data analysis approach aimed at theory construction [and] rests on the cultivation of anomalous and surprising empirical findings against a background of multiple existing sociological theories and through systematic methodological analysis” (Timmermans and Tavory 2012). A third criticism usually raised against the single-​case study analysis is its “lack of methodological rigor” and the absence of systematic procedures (Yin 2009), so much so that it “becomes a synonym for freeform research where anything goes” (Maoz 2002). As a suspicious Eckstein puts it, in this setup, a researcher could gather some observations and “without hard rules of interpretation, may discern in them any number of patterns that are more or less equally plausible” (1975: 134). However, following in the footsteps of Lyotard, and embracing his “incredulity toward meta-​narratives” (1994: xxiv), I believe that this more free-​form approach could actually be advantageous in delving into the subtleties and particularities of individual cases. As a theory-​guided case study (Levy 2008), my analysis seeks to explain and interpret a single historical episode in all its subtlety. While doing so, I employ my findings and observations to develop a theoretical intervention and suggest that a focus on the Turkish-​Kurdish conflict could help us improve theories of ethnic and religious identity formation, as well as those of conflict resolution. Moreover, although this is a single-​case analysis, it includes several intra-​case comparisons: Turkish religious elites versus Kurdish religious elites, state-​appointed imams versus non-​state-​ appointed imams, Kurdish movement-​affiliated religious elites versus state-​affiliated religious elites versus non-​affiliated religious elites. As such, it still provides ample variation to allow for a comparative sociological analysis.

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Tables are indicated by t following the page number Abbasids, 64–​65, 67 Abd al-​Malik (Caliph), 65n.10 Abd al-​Rahman ibn Muawiyah ibn Hisham, 64 Abdülhamid II (Sultan), 27–​28, 32–​33, 35–​37, 68–​69, 72–​73, 112, 113, 114–​15,  117–​18 Abdullah al-​Rasibi,  63–​64 Abdülmecid I (Sultan), 111–​12 Abdurrahman Pasha, 30 Abolition of Caliphate, 27–​28, 66, 119, 121 Abortive coup (2016), 102n.2 Abu Bakr (Caliph), 63 Abu Sufyan (early Islamic figure), 63 Academics for Peace, 143n.15 Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi. See Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi/​AKP) Adıvar, Halide Edip, 121 ADYÖD (Ankara Democratic Higher Education Association/​Ankara Demokratik Yüksek Öğrenim Derneği),  49–​50 Ağaoğlu, Ahmed, 116, 117–​18, 122 Ahmed III (Sultan), 68 Ahmed Midhat Efendi, 112–​13 Akçura, Yusuf, 115–​16, 117–​18, 121–​22 AKP. See Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi/​AKP) Albania, ethnicity-​religion boundaries in, 16 Alevi Kurds, 27–​28, 36–​37, 43, 44, 138–​39 Alevis, 2–​3n.2, 148 Ali, Hüseyinzade, 116, 121 Ali (Caliph), 63–​64 al-​Nusra,  7–​8 Alp, Tekin, 123

Alphabet Reform, 69 al-​Qaeda,  7–​8 Ankara Democratic Higher Education Association (Ankara Demokratik Yüksek Öğrenim Derneği/​ ADYÖD),  49–​50 Anter, Musa, 46–​47 Apocular, 50–​51. See also Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê/​PKK) Armenians massacre of, 27–​28, 118n.4 uprising of, 36–​37 Asadzade, Peyman, 140n.4 Asım, Necip, 115–​16 al-​Assad, Bashar, 143 Association for the Solidarity of Ulama (Din Alimleri Yardımlaşma Derneği/​ DİAY-​DER), 85, 146 Association of Human Rights and Solidarity for the Oppressed (Mazlum-​Der), 96–​97, 146 Association of the Exploration of Turkish History (Türk Tarih Tetkik Cemiyeti), 122 Atalay, Beşir, 139n.2 Atatürk. See Kemal, Mustafa Azadî,  39–​41 Azadî İnsiyatifi, 96–​97, 146 Azizoğlu, Yusuf, 46 Azoury, Nagib, 116 Baban Revolt (1806-​1808), 30 Balkans, Ottoman Empire and, 110–​11,  113 Balkan Wars, 116 Barzani, Mustafa, 48

176 Index Battle of Camel (656), 63 Battle of Siffin (657), 63–​64 BDP. See Peace and Democracy Party (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi/​BDP) Bedir Khan Bey, 30–​32 Bedirxan, Celadet, 41 Bedirxan, Süreyya, 41 Bohtan (emirate), 30–​31 Bookchin, Murray, 85 Bosnia and Herzegovina, role of religion in ethnic conflict in, 12–​13 Boundaries boundary contraction, 14–​15 boundary expansion, 14–​15 ethnic boundary blurring, 14–​15, 17–​ 19, 55–​56, 60–​61,  136–​37 symbolic boundary construction, 14–​15 symbolic boundary making, 5, 10, 139 Bourdieu, Pierre, 20–​21, 91, 92, 93–​95, 98. See also Field theory Bucak, Faik, 46 Bulgaria ethnicity-​religion boundaries in, 16 independence of, 110–​11, 113 Pomaks in, 16 Cahun, Leon, 115–​16, 117 Caliphate abolition of, 27–​28, 66, 119, 121 in Ottoman Empire, 38–​39, 66–​69 Case selection, 148–​49 Catholicism Basques and, 16, 23, 140 Castilians and, 16 field theory and, 91, 92, 98 liberation theology and, 100 Çayan, Mahir, 49 Ceasefire, 8–​10, 25–​26, 74–​76,  130–​31 Cemaat (Gülen movement), 102n.2 Cevdet, Abdullah, 115 CHP. See Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi/​CHP) Civil disobedience, 2–​3, 86–​87 Civil Friday Prayers generally, 1–​2, 24–​25, 28, 79, 80 AKP on, 87–​88, 99 attempts to ban, 26–​27 BDP and, 85–​86, 87–​88, 89–​91, 93–​94, 97–​98,  100

as civil disobedience, 2–​3, 86–​87 Diyanet and, 98–​99 Erdoğan on, 87–​88, 93–​94 field theory and, 93–​94, 95–​96 HDP and, 85–​86, 87–​88, 97–​98, 100 imams and, 19, 87–​91 in Kurdish, 3 meles (non-​state-​appointed imams) and, 1–​3, 65–​66, 80–​82, 88–​91, 145, 146 Menzil order and, 105 Muslim Turks on, 83–​84 participant observation, 147 PKK and, 86, 87–​88 Qur’an and, 88–​91 religio-​ethnic identity and, 22–​23,  85–​91 religious elites and, 145 resistance, as tool of, 97–​98, 100,  135–​36 Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), 115, 117, 118, 119 Congress of the Teachers’ Association,  119–​20 Constitution of 1924, 120–​21 Constitution of 1982, 128 Constitution of Medina, 62 Council of Higher Education (YÖK),  74–​75 Crimean War, 32 Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi. See Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi/​CHP) DDKO (Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları/​ Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths),  47–​49 Deculturation,  55–​56 Demirtaş, Selahattin, 9, 142–​43 Democratic Islam Congresses, 85–​86 Democratic opening, 74–​75 Democratic Society Congress (DTK), 7–​8,  85–​86 Democratic Society Party (Demokratik Toplum Partisi/​DTP), 75–​76,  88 Democrat Party, 44–​45, 125–​27 Demokratik Toplum Partisi (Democratic Society Party/​DTP), 75–​76, 88 Deniker, Joseph, 122–​23

Index  177 Department of Religious Education,  126–​27 Dersim Rebellion (1937-​1938), 39, 43–​44 Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları (Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths/​DDKO),  47–​49 Devrimci Gençlik (Revolutionary Youth/​ Dev-​Genç), 49 Dev-​Sol, 49 Dev-​Yol, 49 DİAY-​DER (Association for the Solidarity of Ulama/​Din Alimleri Yardımlaşma Derneği), 85, 146 Dicle-​Fırat (journal), 46–​47 Din Alimleri Yardımlaşma Derneği (Association for the Solidarity of Ulama/​DİAY-​DER), 85, 146 Discourse analysis, 147–​48 Diyanet. See Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı) Dolmabahçe Agreement (2015), 75–​76,  132 DTP (Demokratik Toplum Partisi/​ Democratic Society Party), 75–​76, 88 Early Republican period Dersim Rebellion (1937-​1938), 39,  43–​44 Kurds and Islam in, 37–​44 Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı) Rebellion (1929-​1930), 39, 41–​42, 44 Sheikh Said Rebellion (1925), 39–​41, 44, 51 Eastern Meetings (Doğu Mitingleri), 47 “Eastern Problem” (Doğu Sorunu), 46–​47,  49 “Eastists,” 46 Ecevit, Bülent, 49 Economic liberalism, 45 Edict of Gülhane (1839), 111–​12 Ekinci, Tarık Ziya, 46 Elçi, Şerafettin, 49 Elections, 9, 133–​34 Encümen-​i Daniş,  111–​12 Erbakan, Necmettin, 6, 75, 127–​29 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip generally, 3–​4,  138–​39 on ceasefire, 9–​10

on Civil Friday Prayers, 87–​88, 93–​94 Dolmabahçe Agreement and, 75–​76 as mayor of İstanbul,  128–​29 “Muslim fraternity” and, 5–​6, 8 neo-​Ottoman policy of, 70–​76 on non-​Muslim minorities, 73 pan-​Islamism and,  70–​76 on peace negotiations, 8, 9, 132 on PKK, 131 on religious identity, 22, 56 speeches of, 147–​48 transformation of views, 130–​34 on Turkish nationalism, 70–​72, 77–​78,  130–​34 Ersoy, Mehmet Akif, 124, 124n.8 Erzurum Congress (1919), 38, 119 Ethnic boundary blurring, 14–​15, 17–​19, 55–​56, 60–​61,  136–​37 Ethnic conflict conflict resolution tool, religion as, 13–​14,  16–​20 defined,  10–​11 ethnicity, role of, 12, 135 exacerbating factor, religion as, 12–​13 in former Soviet bloc, 11–​12 religion, role of, 12, 135 trigger for, religion as, 12–​13 Ethnicity boundary with religion, 14–​18 defined,  10–​11 ethnic conflict, role in, 12, 135 Islam and, 77–​78 nationalism and, 4 religious elites divided by, 82–​83 religious roots of, 80–​84 Ethno-​religious identity generally, 4, 16–​17, 18t, 23, 137 AKP and, 23 failure of “Muslim fraternity” and,  16–​19 Islamism and, 110, 113–​15 Ottomanism and, 110–​13 (See also Ottomanism) “Turkification of Islam” and, 46, 124–​25,  137 Turkish History Thesis and, 121–​24 (See also Turkish History Thesis)

178 Index Ethno-​religious identity (cont) Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (TIS) and, 125–​30 (See also Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (TIS)) Turkish nationalism and, 101–​10 Turkism and, 115–​18 (See also Turkism) Turks and, 19, 23, 137 Evren, Kenan, 6, 128–​29 Fazilet Partisi (Virtue Party/​FP), 127–​28 Federation of Kurdistan Islamic Community,  7–​8 Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi/​SP),  127–​28 Fethullah Terrorist Organization (Fethullah Terör Örgütü/​FETÖ), 102n.2 Field theory generally,  20–​21 AKP and, 95–​97 Catholicism and, 91, 92, 98 Civil Friday Prayers and, 93–​94, 95–​96 competition and, 91–​92 Diyanet and, 94–​96 orthodoxy versus heresy, 94 religio-​ethnic identity and, 79, 91–​97,  97t religion and, 92 Fiqh law, 93 Fırat, Şerif, 46 Forced relocation of peoples, 118, 119–​20 France, Ottoman Empire and, 32 Frashëri, Şemseddin Sami, 115–​16 Free Cause Party (Hür Dava Partisi/ ​Hüda-​Par), 56–​57,  96–​97 Future research, 140 Galip, Reşit, 33–​34n.3, 122–​23, 124 Gaspıralı, İsmail, 116 Genç Kalemler (journal), 117 General Directorate for Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants, 118 Gökalp, Ziya, 115, 117–​18, 117n.3, 121–​22,  123 Grand Union Party (Büyük Birlik Partisi/​ BBP),  128–​29 Greece forced relocation of people to, 119–​20 independence of, 110–​11, 113

“Green Kemalism” generally,  21–​22 AKP and, 27–​28 Diyanet and, 26–​27 “Muslim fraternity” and, 28 Gülen, Fethullah, 102n.2, 103 Gülen movement, 102n.2, 103, 105–​8, 128–​29, 133–​34,  146 Günay, Ertuğrul, 134 Gürsel, Cemal, 46 Hadiths, 8, 20–​21, 22–​23, 88, 93–​94, 124, 146 Hakkari, Mawlana Khalid Seyyid Taha-​i,  34–​35 Hakkari (emirate), 31, 32 Hamidiye Light Cavalry Regiments (Hamidiye Süvari Alayları), 36–​37,  43 Hanafi school, 93, 148 Hanbali school, 93 HDP. See People’s Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi/​HDP) Hizmet (Gülen movement), 102n.2 Homeland Party (Vatan Partisi),  133–​34 Hope (Hêvî) (student union), 36–​37 Hüda-​Par (Party of God), 56–​57 Hussain (son of Ali), 64 İbrahim Pasha, 30, 31 Identity categories ethno-​religious identity (See Ethno-​religious identity) failure of “Muslim fraternity” and, 4–​5 religio-​ethnic identity (See Religio-​ethnic identity) religious identity (See Religious identity) secular ethnic identity, 4, 16–​17, 18t, 121, 137 structural political factors and, 20–​21,  138–​39 theoretical framework, 5 Identity differentiation, 81 İhsan Nuri Pasha, 41 İleri Yurt (publication), 46 İmam Hatip Schools, 125–​26, 126n.11, 128 Imams

Index  179 Civil Friday Prayers and, 19, 87–​91 Kurdish imams, 6, 19, 78–​79, 82 meles (non-​state-​appointed imams) (See Meles (non-​state-​appointed imams)) resistance, as tool of, 22–​23 state-​appointed imams, 6, 19, 54, 78–​79, 82, 97–​98,  135–​36 Turkish imams,  101–​3 İnan, Afet, 122–​23 Indonesia, role of religion in ethnic conflict in, 12–​13 Institute for the Exploration of the Turkish Culture (Türk Kültürünü Araştırma Enstitüsü),  126–​27 Intellectuals’ Hearth (Aydınlar Ocağı),  126–​28 International Crisis Group, 142 Interviews,  146–​47 Iran Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı) Rebellion and,  41–​42 Ottoman Empire and, 30–​31 Islam AKP, as tool of resistance against, 79 early disunity in, 62 early Republican period, Kurds and Islam in, 37–​44 ethnicity and, 77–​78 field theory and, 92–​94 Gülen movement, 103, 105–​8, 128–​29, 133–​34,  146 “Islam as cement,” 22, 135–​37 Kemal and, 37, 38 Khalidi branch, 35n.4 Kharijites,  63–​64 “Kurdification of Islam,” 81 Kurdish nationalism versus, 55–​56, 58–​59,  78–​79 Marxism versus, 86 Menzil order, 103, 104–​5, 146 Mevlevi order, 146 Naqshbandiyya-​Mujaddidiya-​ Khalidiyya order, 34–​35, 44–​45 Öcalan on, 7–​8, 52 PKK and, 3–​4, 7–​8, 28–​29, 51–​53,  85–​86 potential as conflict resolution tool, 54–​55,  56–​61

Qadiriyya order, 34–​35, 44–​45, 146 resistance, as tool of, 97–​100 Shi’a Islam (See Shi’a Islam) state and, 77–​78 Sufi Islam, 34–​35, 35n.4, 96–​97, 121 Sunni Islam (See Sunni Islam) “Turkification of Islam,” 46, 124–​25, 137 Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (TIS), 125–​30 (See also Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (TIS)) Turkish nationalism versus, 55–​56, 58–​60, 77–​78,  101–​10 “Islamic liberation theology,” 100 Islamic State (ISIS), 9–​10, 140, 141, 143 Islamism, 110, 113–​15 Islam: The National Religion of the Turk (Müslümanlık: Türk’ün Milli Dini), 124 Italy, invasion of Tripoli, 116 İzmirli, İsmail Hakkı,  124–​25 Journal of Islam (İslam Mecmuası), 117 Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi/​AKP) generally, 53, 138–​39 on Civil Friday Prayers, 87–​88, 99 democratic opening and, 74–​75 Dolmabahçe Agreement and, 75–​76 in elections, 133–​34 electoral victory of, 53 ethno-​religious identity and, 23 field theory and, 95–​97 “Green Kemalism” and, 27–​28 (See also “Green Kemalism”) Islam as tool of resistance against, 79 “Muslim fraternity” and, 2–​4, 75–​76,  78–​79 neo-​Ottoman policy of, 70–​76 non-​Muslim minorities and, 73 pan-​Islamism and,  70–​76 People’s Alliance and, 134 religion and, 21, 26 religious identity and, 22, 56 Sunni Islam and, 6, 21, 53, 135–​36 transformation of views, 133–​34 Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (TIS) and, 130 ummah and, 53

180 Index Kafesoğlu, İbrahim, 126–​27, 128 Kansu, Şevket Aziz, 122–​23 Kara, İsmail,  124–​25 Kemal, Ali, 116 Kemal, Mustafa. See also Early Republican period Caliphate and, 38–​39 Diyanet and, 95–​96 Islam and, 37, 38 Kurds and, 38–​39 secularization and, 121 Six Arrows of Kemalism, 123 “Turkification of Islam” and, 124 Turkish History Thesis and, 115–​16 Turkish War of Independence and, 119 Kemal, Namık,  113–​14 Kemal, Yahya, 125–​26 Kemal, Yusuf, 123 Khalidi branch of Islam, 35n.4 Kharijites,  63–​64 Kısakürek, Necip Fazıl,  125–​26 Kobanî, ISIS siege of, 9–​10, 141 Koçgiri Rebellion (1921), 27–​28, 36–​37 Köprülü, Fuad, 115 Küçükkaynarca Treaty (1774), 68 Kuntay, Mithat Cemal, 130–​31 “Kurdification of Islam,” 81 Kurdish Hizbullah, 7, 9, 52n.12, 52–53, 56–​57,  96–​97 Kurdish movement. See also specific topic in early Republican period, 37–​44 “Eastists,” 46 ethnification of, 49 historical background, 7 Marxism and, 47 Mustafa Kemal and, 38–​39 religio-​ethnic identity and (See Religio-​ ethnic identity) secularization of, 44–​51 Sunni Islam and, 26, 37 trivialization by Turks, 109 “Turkification” and, 46 Kurdish nationalism generally,  3–​4 class war and, 50 criticism of, 103 “Eastern Problem” and, 46–​47, 49 “Eastists” and, 46

Hamidiye Light Cavalry Regiments and,  36–​37 Islam versus, 55–​56, 58–​59, 78–​79 madrasas and, 65–​66 Marxism and, 7 secular nationalism, 6, 45 Ubeydullah Nehri and, 34 Kurdish Society for Mutual Aid and Progress (Kürt Teavün ve Terakki Cemiyeti),  36–​37 Kurdish Tribal League, 33 Kurdistan National Liberators (KUK),  48–​49 Kurdistan Socialist Party of Turkey (TKSP),  48–​49 Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê/​PKK) autonomous urban zones, declaration of, 141 ceasefire and, 74–​76 Civil Defense Units (YPS), 141–​42 Civil Friday Prayers and, 86, 87–​88 Dolmabahçe Agreement and, 75–​76 Erdoğan on, 131 ideological transformation of, 85–​86 Islam and, 3–​4, 7–​8, 28–​29, 51–​53,  85–​86 Marxism and, 7, 28–​29, 50–​51, 53 military conflict between PKK and TSK (See Military conflict between PKK and TSK) origins of, 49–​51 Patriotic Revolutionary Movement (YDG-​H),  141–​42 peace negotiations and, 8, 75–​76 secular nationalism and, 7 Turkish nationalism and, 58–​59 violence and, 50–​51, 56–​57 Lausanne Peace Treaty (1923), 37–​38,  119–​20 Law for the Unification of Education, 38–​39,  121 Liberia, role of religion in ethnic conflict in,  12–​13 Madrasas, 38–​39, 65–​66,  96–​97 Mahmud II (Sultan), 29–​30, 111–​12

Index  181 Main Contours of Turkish History (Türk Tarihinin Ana Hatları), 122 Maliki school, 93 Mamak Prison, 49 Martial law, 49 Marxism Islam versus, 86 Kurdish movement and, 47 Kurdish nationalism and, 7 PKK and, 7, 28–​29, 50–​51, 53 Mazlum-​Der (Association of Human Rights and Solidarity for the Oppressed), 96–​97, 146 Med-​Zehra, 96–​97,  105–​6 Meles (non-​state-​appointed  imams) generally, 4 Civil Friday Prayers and, 1–​3, 65–​66, 80–​82, 88–​91, 145, 146 Diyanet and, 6, 97–​100 “mele project,” 97–​98 Ottoman Empire, nostalgia for, 69–​70 Menzil order, 103, 104–​5, 146 Methodology of study generally,  145–​46 case selection, 148–​49 discourse analysis, 147–​48 future research, 140 interviews,  146–​47 limitations,  148–​49 participant observation, 147–​48 single-​case studies, 139–​40,  148–​49 Mevlevi order, 146 MGK (Milli Güvenlik Kurulu/​National Security Council), 6 Midhat Pasha, 112 Military conflict between PKK and TSK generally,  3–​4 ceasefire, 8–​10, 25–​26, 74–​76,  130–​31 compensation for losses in, 74 costs of, 142 peace negotiations, 8–​10, 24–​25, 74, 75–​76, 130–​31,  132 prospects for, 141–​44 religion, role of, 10 resumption of, 9–​10, 25–​26, 75–​76, 130–​31, 135–​36,  141–​42 Military coup (1960), 46–​47, 126–​27 Military coup (1971), 48–​49

Military coup (1980), 128 Milli Güvenlik Kurulu (National Security Council/​MGK),  6 Milli Nizam Partisi (National Order Party/​ MNP),  127–​28 Milli Selamet Partisi (National Salvation Party/​MSP),  127–​28 Ministry of Culture, 101 Ministry of Education, 126–​27 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 101 Ministry of Science, Industry, and Technology, 101 Mir Muhammad, 30–​31 Mir Nurullah Bey, 32 Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi),  128–​29 Mount Ararat (Ağrı Dağı) Rebellion (1929-​1930), 39, 41–​42, 44 Muawiya (early Islamic figure), 63–​64 Muhammad Ali (of Egypt), 30–​31 Muhammad Khati, 31 Muhammad (Prophet) generally,  85–​86 Kurdish movement and, 88 Öcalan on, 52 Shuubiya controversy and, 64–​65 on ummah,  62–​63 Murat, Mizancı, 115 “Muslim fraternity” AKP and, 2–​4, 75–​76, 78–​79 Erdoğan and, 5–​6, 8 failure of, 4–​5, 100, 135–​36, 138 “Green Kemalism” and, 28 (See also “Green Kemalism”) identity categories and failure of, 16–​19 Kurds and, 81–​82 Öcalan and, 8 Mustafa Celaleddin Pasha, 115–​16 Mustazaf-​Der, 96–​97, 146 al-​Mutawakkil (Caliph), 67 Nadir Shah (of Persia), 68 Naim, Babanzade Ahmed, 117–​18 Naqshbandi, 34–​35, 44–​45,  128–​29 Naqshbandiyya-​Mujaddidiya-​Khalidiyya order, 34–​35,  44–​45 Nationalism ethnicity and, 4

182 Index Nationalism (cont) Kemalism and, 27–​28 Kurdish nationalism (See Kurdish nationalism) Ottomanism, 110–​13 (See also Ottomanism) religion and, 4 religious identity and, 74 secular nationalism, 6–​7, 45, 129–​30,  135 Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (TIS) and, 110 Turkish nationalism (See Turkish nationalism) Turkism, 115–​18 (See also Turkism) Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi/​MHP), 127–​29,  133–​34 National Order Party (Milli Nizam Partisi/​ MNP),  127–​28 National Salvation Party (Milli Selamet Partisi/​MSP),  127–​28 National Security Council (Milli Güvenlik Kurulu/​MGK), 6, 49 National Unity Committee (NUC), 46 Nestorian Christians, 31–​32, 33, 35–​36 Non-​Muslim minorities, 73, 109, 112–​13, 118, 119–​20, 124 Northern Ireland, ethnicity-​religion boundaries in, 15 Nûbihar, 105–​6, 146 Öcalan, Abdullah generally,  3–​4 arrest of, 53 founding of PKK and, 7, 49–​51 on Islam, 7–​8, 52 Islam and, 85 on Muhammad (Prophet), 52 “Muslim fraternity” and, 8 on ummah,  7–​8 Organization of the Islamic Conference, 54 Orthodox Christianity, 16 Ottoman Empire Armenian massacre, 27–​28, 118n.4 Balkans and, 110–​11, 113 Caliphate in, 38–​39, 66–​69 Constitution of 1876, 111–​12 France and, 32

Hamidian Era, 113–​14 Iran and, 30–​31 Kurdish nostalgia for, 65–​66, 69–​70 Kurdish revolts in, 29–​37 madrasas in, 65–​66 Mamluk rule, 67 millet system, 67, 69, 72–​73 pan-​Islamism in, 32–​33, 36–​37, 114 Porte government, 32, 33, 34–​36,  111–​12 Russia and, 31, 32, 68, 113 Sultans in, 67–​69 Tanzimat Era, 66, 69, 110–​12, 113–​14 Turkish nationalism in, 69 ummah in, 65–​70 United Kingdom and, 31, 32, 33 United States and, 32 Ottomanism,  110–​13 generally, 110 “identity crisis” in, 113 non-​Muslim minorities and, 112–​13 ulama and, 112 Özal, Turgut, 128–​29 Özgür-​Der, 96–​97, 146 Palestinian-​Israeli conflict, ethnicity-​ religion boundaries and, 15 Pan-​Islamism generally, 22 AKP and, 70–​76 Erdoğan and, 70–​76 in Ottoman Empire, 32–​33, 36–​37, 114 Turkism versus, 117–​18 ummah and, 61 (See also Ummah (global Islamic community)) Participant observation, 147–​48 Party of God (Hüda-​Par),  56–​57 Peace and Democracy Party (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi/​BDP) generally, 7–​8, 24–​25, 53, 146 Civil Friday Prayers and, 85–​86, 87–​88, 89–​91, 93–​94, 97–​98,  100 Peace negotiations, 8–​10, 24–​25, 74, 75–​ 76, 130–​31, 132 People’s Alliance, 134 People’s Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi/​HDP) generally,  138–​39 Civil Friday Prayers and, 85–​86, 87–​88, 97–​98,  100

Index  183 Dolmabahçe Agreement and, 75–​76 in elections, 9, 133–​34 imprisonment of members, 142–​43 People’s Protection Units (YPG), 141, 143 Pittard, Eugène, 122–​23, 123n.6 PKK. See Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê/​PKK) Positivism, 123 Powell, Jonathan, 143–​44 Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı) generally, 121 budget of, 101, 125–​26 Civil Friday Prayers and, 98–​99 creation of, 38–​39, 66 field theory and, 94–​96 “Green Kemalism” and, 26–​27 imams, 6 Kemal and, 95–​96 “mele project”, 97–​98 meles (non-​state-​appointed imams) and, 6, 97–​100 on prayer in Turkish, 124 terrorism and, 6 Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (TIS) and,  128–​29 Qadir, Sayyid Abd al, 34–​35 Qadiriyya order, 34–​35, 44–​45, 146 Qautrefages de Bréau, Jean Louis de,  122–​23 Qur’an generally, 1, 3–​4, 146 Civil Friday Prayers and, 88–​91 ethnic boundary blurring and,  17–​19 potential as conflict resolution tool, 54–​55,  57–​58 religious identity and, 22–​23 Shuubiya controversy, 64–​65 translation into Turkish, 124 ulama and, 93–​94 ummah in, 62 Racism. See Turkish nationalism Rashidun caliphs, 63–​64 Refah Partisi (Welfare Party/​RP), 6,  127–​28 Reform Edict of 1856, 111–​12 Religio-​ethnic identity

generally, 4, 16–​17, 18t, 22–​23, 78–​79,  137 Civil Friday Prayers and, 22–​23, 85–​91 (See also Civil Friday Prayers) failure of “Muslim fraternity” and,  16–​19 field theory and, 79, 91–​97, 97t Islam as tool of resistance, 97–​100 Kurds and, 19, 22–​23, 78–​79, 137–​38 Muslim Turks versus Muslim Kurds, 81,  83–​84 religious elites, division by ethnicity,  82–​83 Religion AKP and, 21, 26 boundary with ethnicity, 14–​18 ethnic conflict, role in, 12, 135 ethnicity, religious roots of, 80–​84 as exacerbating factor in conflict, 12–​13 failure as conflict resolution tool, 139 field theory and, 92 military conflict between PKK and TSK, 12 nationalism and, 4 potential as conflict resolution tool, 13–​14, 16–​17,  138 resistance, as tool of, 22–​23, 100 as trigger for conflict, 12–​13 Religious elites Civil Friday Prayers and, 145 defined, 145 division by ethnicity, 82–​83 Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (TIS) and,  129–​30 use in study, 145–​46 Religious identity generally, 4, 16–​17, 18t, 22, 54–​56, 137 AKP and, 22, 56 Erdoğan on, 22, 56 “Islam as cement,” 22, 135–​37 nationalism and, 74 Qur’an and, 22–​23 Republican Peasants’ Nation Party (Cumhuriyetçi Köylü Millet Partisi), 127 Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi/​CHP), 44–​45, 49, 94–​95, 122, 123, 125–​26 Reşid Mehmet Pasha, 30–​31 Resul Bey, 30–​31

184 Index Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Associations (Devrimci Doğu Kültür Dernekleri),  48–​49 Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths (Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları/​ DDKO),  47–​49 Revolutionary Youth (Devrimci Gençlik/​ Dev-​Genç), 49 Riza, Seyyid, 44 Rıza, Ahmet, 115 Roboski massacre, 80–​81, 80n.1 Rojava (autonomous Kurdish federation in Syria), 9–​10, 138–​39 Romania, independence of, 110–​11, 113 Russia Ottoman Empire and, 31, 32, 68, 113 Syria and, 143 Russian-​Ottoman Wars, 30–​31, 32–​33,  113 Rwanda, role of religion in ethnic conflict in,  12–​13 Safa, Peyami, 125–​26 Said i-​Nursi, 102n.2, 103, 105–​6 Second History Congress (1937), 124–​25 Secular ethnic identity, 4, 16–​17, 18t, 121, 137 Secularization Kemal and, 121 of Kurdish movement, 44–​51 Secularization thesis, 12 Secular nationalism, 6–​7, 45, 129–​30, 135 Selim III (Sultan), 111–​12 Selim I (Sultan), 67–​68 Serbia, independence of, 110–​11, 113 Serxwebûn (journal), 52 Sèvres Treaty (1920), 119–​20 Seyyid Bey, 119 Shafi’i school, 93, 148 Shari’a, 27–​28, 38–​39, 93 Sheikh al-​Islam (office), 38–​39 Sheikh Said, 27–​28, 34–​36, 39–​41, 85–​86 Sheikh Said Rebellion (1925), 39–​41, 44, 51 Shi’a Islam, 2–​3n.2, 35–​36, 63–​64, 64n.8, 140, 140n.4 Shuubiya controversy, 64–​65 Single-​case studies, 139–​40,  148–​49

al-​Sirhindi, Ahmad al-​Faruqhi,  34–​35 Sivas Congress (1919), 38, 119 Six Arrows of Kemalism, 123 Society for the Rise of Kurdistan (Kürdistan Teali Cemiyeti), 34–​35,  36–​37 Sohbet (women’s gatherings), 104–​5 Solidarism, 123 Soran (emirate), 30–​31 Soviet bloc (former), ethnic conflict in,  11–​12 Spain Basques in, 16, 23, 140 Castilians in, 16 ethnicity-​religion boundaries in, 16 Sri Lanka, role of religion in ethnic conflict in,  12–​13 State of emergency, 74, 96, 142–​43 State Planning Office, 128 Structural political factors, 20–​21, 138–​39 Suavi, Ali, 113–​14 Sufism, 34–​35, 35n.4, 96–​97, 121 Sun-​Language Theory (Güneş-​Dil Teorisi), 123 Sunnah,  93–​94 Sunni Islam generally,  3–​4 AKP and, 6, 21, 53, 135–​36 failure as conflict resolution tool, 16–​19, 109, 136–​37, 138 Hanafi school, 93, 148 Hanbali school, 93 Kurds and, 26, 37 Maliki school, 93 Shafi’i school, 93, 148 as supranational identity, 135–​36 Turkish nationalism and, 119–​20 Supranational religious identity. See Religious identity Symbolic boundary construction, 14–​15 Symbolic boundary making, 5, 10, 139 Syria Civil War, 143 Free Syrian Army (FSA), 143 Islamic State (ISIS) in, 9–​10, 141, 143 Kobanî, ISIS siege of, 9–​10, 141

Index  185 Kurds in, 9 Rojava (autonomous Kurdish federation), 9–​10,  138–​39 Russia and, 143 Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), 143 United States and, 143 Talha (early Islamic figure), 63 Taner, Ali Haydar, 119–​20 Tankut, Reşit, 122 Tanrıöver, Hamdullah Suphi, 124 TBMM (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi/​ Turkish Grand National Assembly), 38–​39,  119 TIS. See Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (TIS) Togan, Zeki Velidi, 122–​23, 123n.7,  126–​27 Topçu, Necmettin, 125–​26 Topinard, Paul, 122–​23 Toynbee, Arnold, 39 Treaty of Berlin (1878), 33 Tripoli, Italian invasion of, 116 Turan, Osman, 126–​27 Türkeş, Alparslan, 127 “Turkification of Islam,” 46, 124–​25, 137 Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), 2–​3. See also Military conflict between PKK and TSK Turkish Grand National Assembly (Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi/​ TBMM), 38–​39, 119 Turkish Hearths’ Committee for the Exploration of Turkish History (Türk Ocakları Türk Tarih Tetkik Heyeti), 122 Turkish Hearths (Türk Ocakları), 69, 71 Turkish History Thesis, 121–​24 development of, 69–​70 Kemal and, 115–​16 non-​Muslim minorities and, 124 Ottoman period, downplaying of,  69–​70 positivism and, 123 “scientific” basis for, 122–​23 solidarism and, 123 Sun-​Language Theory (Güneş-​Dil Teorisi) and, 123

Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (TIS) compared,  126–​27 Turkish Human Rights Association, 142 Turkish-​Islamic Synthesis (TIS) generally, 23, 110, 114–​15, 117–​18 AKP and, 130 Diyanet and, 128–​29 ethno-​religious identity and, 125–​30 nationalism and, 110 religious elites and, 129–​30 Turkish History Thesis compared,  126–​27 Turkish nationalism generally, 23 criticism of, 103 Erdoğan on, 70–​72, 77–​78, 130–​34 Islam versus, 55–​56, 58–​60, 77–​78,  101–​10 in Ottoman Empire, 69 PKK and, 58–​59 secular nationalism, 6–​7 Sunni Islam and, 119–​20 Turkism, 115–​18 (See also Turkism) ummah versus, 61, 102–​3, 109 “Turkishness contract,” 109, 124 Turkish People’s Liberation Party and Front (Türkiye Halk Kurtuluş Partisi Cephesi/​THKP-​C),  49 Turkish Society (Türk Derneği), 116 Turkish War of Independence, 38, 43, 119 Turkism,  115–​18 generally, 110 forced relocation of peoples and, 118 ideological debates, 115–​16, 117–​18 non-​Muslim minorities and, 118 pan-​Islamism versus,  117–​18 writings influencing, 115–​16, 117–​18 Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi (Turkish Grand National Assembly/​TBMM), 38–​39,  119 Türk Kültürü (journal), 126–​27 Türk Tarih Tetkik Cemiyeti (Association of the Exploration of Turkish History), 122 Ubeydullah Nehri (Sheikh), 32–​36 Ulama (religious experts), 93–​94, 112

186 Index Ülkücü (nationalist youth movement),  125–​26 Ülkü (journal), 123 Umar (Caliph), 63 Umayyad Empire, 64–​65 Ummah (global Islamic community) generally, 22 Abbasids and, 64–​65 AKP and, 53 Constitution of Medina and, 62 Kurdish identity and, 27–​28 Muhammad (Prophet) on, 62–​63 Öcalan on, 7–​8 in Ottoman Empire, 65–​70 pan-​Islamism and, 61 (See also Pan-​Islamism) paradox of, 61–​62 potential as conflict resolution tool,  56–​61 in Qur’an, 62 Rashidun caliphs and, 63–​64 shared basic ethos and, 61–​62 Shuubiya controversy and, 64–​65 Turkish nationalism and, 61, 102–​3, 109 United Kingdom, Ottoman Empire and, 31, 32, 33 United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights, 142

United States Ottoman Empire and, 32 Syria and, 143 Uthman (Caliph), 63 Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi/​FP),  127–​28 Welfare Party (Refah Partisi/​RP), 6,  127–​28 Workers’ Party of Turkey (Türkiye İşçi Partisi/​TİP), 47, 48–​49 Xoybûn (Kurdish nationalist organization),  41–​42 Yazdan Sher, 32 Yazidis,  31–​32 Yazid (son of Muawiya), 64 Yazır, Muhammed Hamdi “Elmalılı,” 124 Yenikapı Rally (2016), 134 Young Ottomans, 113–​14, 115 Young Turks, 115, 116–​18, 119, 122 Yüksekdağ, Figen, 142–​43 Yurdakul, Mehmet Emin, 115–​16 Zehra, 96–​97, 105–​6, 146 Ziya Pasha, 113–​14 Zoroastrians,  93–​94 Zubair (early Islamic figure), 63