The experience of Turkish Islamism:between transformation and impoverishment

In recenttimes,ithas become acommonplace claim that Turkey’s Islamic identity has started to play a more significant role in the self-identification and worldview of many Turkish people. This phenomenon has been particularly considered as a sign of the rise of Islamism in Turkey under Justice and Development Party (JDP) rule since 2002.1 This new strength of Islam has alternatively been considered as a unique product of the failure of Islamism,2 or interestingly, as a success of Kemalism by some social scientists,3 while others have interpreted it as a manifestation of the urgent need to reform the authoritarian Republican ideology.4 Needless to say, Islamists, through their discursive transformation and an ad hoc advocacy of the reforms stipulated for the European Union (EU) accession process, have brought a brand new political understanding to Turkish politics. The JDP’s new politics should also be regarded as the culmination of transformations in the various Islamic sectors in Turkey, from religious orders and communities to intellectuals.5 Scholars of Islamism mostly believe that there are two phases of Turkish Islamism in the post-1980 period. The Islamism of the 1980s was characterized by an authoritarian and collective search for a new Islamic identity and a quest for an Islamic state, derived from a Jacobin understanding of state and revolution