Nationalism and the rise of Muslim sentiment in Turkey

The revival of Islamic sentiment clearly constitutes the most significant development to take place within the Middle Eastern region over the past three decades. No country remains unaffected. In Turkey the success of the Refah (Prosperity) Party in nationwide local elections in March 1994 highlighted the steady growth of Muslim consciousness since the return to civilian government in 1983. The religious phenomenon is particularly significant in Turkey because the country is a secular republic and because of the strength of nationalist education since the foundation of the modern state in 1923. A broad range of factors is involved by way of explanation. Two of the most important are demographics (the continuing rural-urban drift which is fraught with cultural and ultimately electoral implications) and the continuing sanction of Muslim values from the top as well as the pull by the activists at the bottom. The common threads which link Muslim activists in Turkey to those in other countries include opposition to secularized nationalist governments in principle and practice. These governments stand accused not only of economic incompetence and corruption (and many outside the ranks of the Muslim activists would agree with them) but of facilitating the continuing domination of their societies by 'the West'. As these overlapping references indicate the present ferment in Muslim societies (however described in a more specific form) is about culture as much as politics or economics. On the one hand is the secularized model of development, largely borrowed from the West; on the other an indigenous framework of values which Muslims would argue has been validated through 1400 years of history.