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ABSTRACT
The dominant scholarly view on Turkish political history, namely the ‘centre-periphery’ approach, has vociferously put forward the judicial and military elites as anchors of an entrenched unitary historical bloc, bequeathed by the Ottoman bureaucratic cadre, which had relentlessly defended a conspicuously definite Kemalist-assertive secularism in the republican period. Diverging from this mainstream historiography, an interrogation of the period from the 1970s to the 1990s shows that (1) the Turkish judges and military did not always act in a unified bloc; at times, they could not exactly agree on the practices and meanings of secularism. Thus, especially at the height of the Cold War, the judges did not only stand in opposition to the societal religious demands but also to some of the pro-Islamic tendencies in the army; (2) the linchpin of the laicism that the judges pursued did not stand in opposition solely with the Islamic religiosity but also impeded certain secularist societal demands. By investigating a selection of court decisions, judicial opinions, and other documents following the congruence method, the article shows that actors’ strategic preferences should be deemed relevant. A revision seems necessary concerning the mainstream academic lens for understanding Turkish laicism in the past and present.
Acknowledgements
This research article is based on certain parts of my unpublished doctoral dissertation work at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/angst-in-ankara-turkey-steers-into-a-dangerous-identity-crisis-a-558099.html; https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-headscarf-idUKL1402491820080414.
4 See Onur Bakiner, ‘A Key to Turkish Politics? The Center–Periphery Framework Revisited’, Turkish Studies, 19:4 (8 August 2018), pp. 503–522.
5 See Haldun Gülalp, ‘Secularism as a Project of Free and Equal Citizenship: Reflections on the Turkish Case’, Frontiers in Sociology, 7 (15 June 2022), pp. 902734, 7–9; H. Ertuğ Tombuş and Berfu Aygenç, ‘(Post-)Kemalist Secularism in Turkey’, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, 19:1 (2 January 2017), p. 78; Cem Tecimer, ‘Rethinking Turkish Secularism: Towards “Unofficial” Islamic Constitutionalism?’, VerfBlog (blog), 26 September 2017, https://verfassungsblog.de/rethinking-turkish-secularism-towards-unofficial-islamic-constitutionalism/, doi:10.17176/20170926-154108.
6 Haldun Gülalp, ‘Whither Secularism?’ in Anna Triantafyllídou and Tina Magazzini (eds), Routledge Handbook on the Governance of Religious Diversity. Routledge International Handbooks (Abingdon, New York: Routledge, 2021), p. 202.
7 Istar Gözaydın, Diyanet: Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Dinin Tanzimi (İstanbul: İletisim, 2020), p. 373; Samuel W. Watters, ‘Developments in AKP Policy Toward Religion and Homogeneity’, German Law Journal, 19:2 (1 May 2018), p. 366.
8 ‘ … in Turkey political Islam challenges the authoritarian and exclusionary politics of secular nationalism’. See Nilüfer Göle, ‘Manifestations of the Religious-Secular Divide: Self, State, and the Public Sphere’, in Linell Elizabeth Cady and Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (eds), Comparative Secularisms in a Global Age. 1st ed. (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 45.
9 Murat Somer, ‘Turkish Secularism: Looking Forward and Beyond the West’, in Matthew Whiting and Alpaslan Ozerdem (eds), Routledge Handbook on Turkish Politics (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 45–47.
10 Ahmet T. Kuru, Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey (Leiden: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 164.
11 William Hale and Ergun Özbudun, Islamism, Democracy and Liberalism in Turkey (Routledge, 2009), p. 22; Mustafa Erdogan, ‘Hukuk ve Siyaset İlişkisi Bağlamında Türk Anayasa Mahkemesi’nin Laiklik Politikası’, in Anayasa Mahkemesinin Kuruluşunun 55. Yılı Anısına: 55 Yıl 55 Makale (Ankara: Anayasa Mahkemesi, 2017), p. 1181.
13 Lacin Idil Oztig, ‘The Turkish Constitutional Court, Laicism and the Headscarf Issue’, Third World Quarterly, 39:3 (4 March 2018), pp. 594–608.
14 Ran Hirschl, Constitutional Theocracy (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 154.
15 Kuru, op. cit., p. 33.
16 Tariq Modood, ‘Moderate Secularism, Religion as Identity and Respect for Religion’, Political Quarterly, 81:1 (March 2010), p. 8.
17 The conception of these two notions is built upon the contentions of Akan, Parla and Davison. See Murat Akan, The Politics of Secularism: Religion, Diversity, and Institutional Change in France and Turkey (Columbia University Press, 2017); Taha Parla and Andrew Davison, ‘Secularism and Laicism in Turkey’, in Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini (eds), Secularisms (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008).
18 Derek Beach and Rasmus Brun Pedersen, Causal Case Study Methods: Foundations and Guidelines for Comparing, Matching and Tracing (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2016), p. 271.
19 Albeit largely within CPF, Kuru is more parsimonious in this sense, as he outright rejects the relevance of the rational choice framework: ‘This approach would have problems regarding my cases. The ban on students’ headscarves in Turkey and France has been politically risky (in the former) and has created huge ruling costs, while not helping economic development at all’. See Kuru, op. cit., p. 21.
20 Ergun Özbudun, ‘Political Origins of the Turkish Constitutional Court and the Problem of Democratic Legitimacy’, European Public Law, 12:2 (2006), p. 218; Zühtü Arslan, ‘Conflicting Paradigms: Political Rights in the Turkish Constitutional Court’, Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, 11:1 (March 2002), p. 11.
21 Beach and Pedersen, op. cit., p. 173.
22 Ibid., pp. 182, 271; Joachim Blatter and Markus Haverland, Designing Case Studies (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2012), p. 145.
23 For the logic of RCF employed in the analysis as the rival theory, see Tamir Moustafa and Tom Ginsburg, ‘Introduction: The Functions of Courts in Authoritarian Politics’, in Tamir Moustafa and Tom Ginsburg (eds), Rule by Law: The Politics of Courts in Authoritarian Regimes (Cambridge [UK] ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 14–21.
24 Özbudun, ‘The Political Origins’, op. cit., p. 216.
25 Paul T. Levin, ‘Reflections on Şerif Mardin’s Center-Periphery Thesis’, Turkish Studies, 24:3–4 (8 August 2023), pp. 626–627.
26 Bakiner, op. cit., p. 12.
27 İlker Aytürk, ‘Post-Post-Kemalizm: Yeni Bir Paradigmayı Beklerken’, in İlker Aytürk and Berk Esen (eds), Post-post-Kemalizm: Türkiye çalışmalarında yeni arayışlar (İstanbul: İletişim, 2022), p. 41.
28 Ibid., p. 40.
29 İlker Aytürk and Berk Esen, ‘Önsöz’, in İlker Aytürk and Berk Esen (eds), Post-post-Kemalizm: Türkiye çalışmalarında yeni arayışlar. İletişim yayınları Politika dizisi, 3188 224 (İstanbul: İletişim, 2022), p. 17.
30 Deniz Kandiyoti, ‘The Travails of the Secular: Puzzle and Paradox in Turkey’, Economy and Society, 41:4 (November 2012), pp. 515–516.
31 Kuru, op. cit., p. 164.
32 ‘They [Kemalists] adopted the Young Turks’ dream of a pure, Turkish Islam, which was redefined as a matter of individual conscience … ’ Umut Azak, Islam and Secularism in Turkey: Kemalism, Religion and the Nation State (London; New York: New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010), p. 12.
33 ‘ … the liberation of the individual from the collective constraints of the Muslim community’. Şerif Mardin, ‘Religion and Secularism in Turkey’, in Ali Kazancigil and Ergun Özbudun (eds), Atatürk Founder of a Modern State (London: C. Hurst, 1981), p. 213.
34 ‘In the words of Nilüfer Göle, Turkey ‘suffers from an excess of secularism … ’’ Quoted in Kuru, op. cit., p. 13.
35 Aslı Bâli, ‘A Kemalist Secular Age? Cultural Politics and Radical Republicanism in Turkey’, in Mirjam Künkler, John Madeley, and Shylashri Shankar (eds), A Secular Age Beyond the West. 1st ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 245, 250; Parla and Davison, op. cit., p. 74.
36 Parla and Davison, op. cit., p. 71.
37 Ergun Özbudun, ‘Secularism in Islamic Countries: Turkey as a Model’, in Rainer Grote and Tilmann J. Röder (eds), Constitutionalism in Islamic Countries: Between Upheaval and Continuity. vol. 1 (Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 138.
38 Asli Bali, ‘Courts and Constitutional Transition: Lessons from the Turkish Case’, Int’l J. Const. L, 11:3 (2013), p. 668.
39 Azak, op. cit., p. 5.
40 Ibid., p. 9.
41 ‘The Constitutional Court, Berkes, and Özek have a shared understanding of secularism, modernity, and Islam’. See Kuru, op. cit., p. 176.
42 William Hale, Turkish Politics and the Military (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 100–104, 153–156.
43 Faruk Güventürk, Laiklik Prensibi ve Atatürk (Erler Matbaasi, 1978), p. 5.
44 Ibid., p. 12.
45 Ibid., p. 23.
46 Ibid., p. 15.
47 Tanıl Bora and Yüksel Taşkın, ‘Sağ Kemalizm’, in Ahmet Insel (ed.), Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce Cilt 2 Kemalizm (Istanbul: İletisim, 2009), pp. 529–545.
48 Ibid., p. 537.
49 Kenan Evren, Kenan Evren’in Anilari 2 (Istanbul: Milliyet, 1991), p. 28.
50 Güven Partisi Seçim Beyannamesi (Ankara: Ankara Basım ve Cilt Evi, 1969), p. 11.
51 State elites’ reformed Islam is taken chiefly as blatant insincere, a plot to undermine authentic Islam of society, and as a manipulative attempt of ‘unwavering materialist elites’ to transform the traditional religion of the masses into a more modern form, as the second best alternative to irreligion. I cannot quite see why some elites may not also have been sincere in their beliefs. For a representation of this dominant tendency, see M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).
52 Bali, op. cit., p. 242.
53 During the Cold War context, it was not so much its conformity with being a matter of private conscience as its being the cement of society ‘in the public realm’ that marked the Kemalists’ understanding of ‘true Islam’.
54 Andrew Davison, Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey: A Hermeneutic Reconsideration. Yale Studies in Hermeneutics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 232 [footnote 49].
55 ‘Evren’in Din Konusundaki Gorusleri: Dinin gosterilere donusmesi yanlis’, Milliyet, 6 December 1986.
56 ‘ … [laicism] ultimately aimed to limit religion to the private sphere by redefining religion as a matter of individual conscience (vicdan), a personal affair’. Azak, op. cit., p. 8.
57 Hanna Lerner, ‘Constitutional Permissiveness, Constitutional Restrictiveness, and Religious Freedom’, in Tom Ginsburg and Aziz Huq (eds), Assessing Constitutional Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 183, 195–196.
58 See Bali, op. cit., p. 250, Parla and Davison, op. cit., p. 68. This means that state elites functioned for the benefit of the periphery-Islamic actors at the expense of the concerns of religious minorities and more secular segments of society. How come state elites’ Islam-promoting public policies then conform to eventual centre-periphery societal-religious dichotomy is a serious question that the proponents of CPF should consider.
59 Kuru, Secularism and State Policies, p. 199.
60 Kuru accepts that assertive and passive secularists converge on controversial policy issues. Indeed, his ideological antagonism explanation remarkably loses plausibility because the ideological difference between assertive and passive secularists does not account for state policies. Kuru argues that policies of assertive secularism in Turkey are inconsistent because ‘they are the product of the struggles between the dominant assertive secularists and challenging passive secularists’. This conforms to the dichotomous idea that societal-religious values rose to prominence as ‘the essence’, ‘the periphery authentic Islam’, had interacted with modernization and urbanization processes. Mardin explained the revitalization of Islam in Turkey with reference to the very characteristics of Islam (mainly its aspect of addressing ontological insecurity) activated in the social vacuum created by Kemalist severing of traditional roots and within the context of social mobilization engendering psychological insecurity (See Mardin, ‘Religion and Secularism in Turkey, p. 218). The very state elites’ religiosity (policy of a specific form of state Islamism over decades) is ignored as a factor culminating in societal religiosity.
61 See Gözaydın, op. cit., pp. 20–30; Mehmet Cengiz Uzun, ‘The Protection of Laicism in Turkey and the Turkish Constitutional Court: The Example of the Prohibition on the Use of the Islamic Veil in Higher Education’, Penn State International Law Review, 28:3 (2010), pp. 392–395.
62 Akan, op. cit., p. 7.
63 Ibid.
64 Sandra Dzenis and Filipe Nobre Faria, ‘Combining Ideology with Narrow Self-Interest in Positive Political Theory’, Journal of Political Ideologies (21 October 2022), p. 15.
65 Anthony James Gill, The Political Origins of Religious Liberty, Cambridge Studies in Social Theory, Religion, and Politics (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 47, 49.
66 Birlik Partisi Tuzuk ve Programi (Istanbul: TIPO, 1969), p. 5.
67 ‘Article 89 – Political Parties can not have contradicting aims with the Article 136 of the constitution, which secures the DRA’s operation … ’ https://www.mevzuat.gov.tr/MevzuatMetin/1.5.2820.pdf.
68 E:1970/53 K:1971/76.
69 Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London: Hurst, 1964), pp. 480–481.
70 E:1970/53 K:1971/76.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid.
75 Kuru, op. cit., p. 176.
76 ‘Islamists were not against state control of religion itself, but of its nature under RPP rule’. See Menderes Çinar and Ipek Gencel Sezgin, ‘Islamist Political Engagement in the Early Years of Multi-Party Politics in Turkey: 1945–60’, Turkish Studies, 14:2 (June 2013), p. 334.
77 Parla and Davison, op. cit., p. 71.
78 Azak, op. cit., p. 14.
79 ‘Millet Partisi Mahkeme Karariyle Feshedildi’, Milliyet, 28 January 1954; Azak, op. cit., p. 14.
80 E:1971/1 K:1971/1.
81 Scope of article 163: Banning aiming or propaganda of, even partially, making fundamental order of the state (social, economic, political, or legal) based on religious principles and beliefs.
82 E:1971/1 K:1971/1
83 Aslı Ü. Bali and Hanna Lerner, ‘Religion and Constitution Making in Comparative Perspective’, in David Landau and Hanna Lerner (eds), Comparative Constitution Making (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019), p. 264.
84 Ran Hirschl, Constitutional Theocracy (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2010), p. 27.
85 Ibid., p. 159.
86 ‘Celal Bayar Anlatiyor’, Tercuman, 23 August 1978, Cited in Ünsal, Siyaset ve Anayasa Mahkemesi, p. 163.
87 Ceren Belge, ‘Friends of the Court: The Republican Alliance and Selective Activism of the Constitutional Court of Turkey’, Law & Society Review, 40:3 (2006), pp. 680–682.
88 ‘Taylan Anayasa Mahkemesinin Kararini Elestiren Sikiyonetim Savcisini Cevapladi’, Milliyet, 28 September 1974.
89 Başak Çalı and Betül Durmuş, ‘Judicial Self-Government as Experimental Constitutional Politics: The Case of Turkey’, German Law Journal, 19:7 (1 December 2018), p. 1677.
90 E:1973/37 K:1975/22.
91 Ibid.
92 Hootan Shambayati, ‘The Guardian of the Regime: The Turkish Constitutional Court in Comparative Perspective’, in Said Amir Arjomand (ed.), Constitutional Politics in the Middle East: With Special Reference to Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan (Oxford: Hart Pub, 2008), p. 99.
93 E:1973/37 K:1975/22.
94 Milli Guvenlik Konseyi Tutanak Dergisi Cilt 5, 26.10.1981, 77th Session [NSC Minute Reports], p. 9.
95 Hootan Shambayati and Esen Kirdiş, ‘In Pursuit of ‘Contemporary Civilization’: Judicial Empowerment in Turkey’, Political Research Quarterly, 62:4 (2009), pp. 773, 776.
96 Erik J. Zürcher, ‘The Importance of Being Secular: Islam in the Service of the National and Pre-National State’, in Celia Kerslake, Kerem Öktem, and Philip Robins (eds), Turkey’s Engagement with Modernity Conflict and Change in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 64; Hale and Özbudun, op. cit., p. xx.
97 E:1980/19 K:1980/48.
98 Shambayati and Kirdiş, op. cit., p. 772.
99 E:1986/11 K:1986/26.
100 Ibid.
101 Ibid.
102 Ibid.
103 Ibid.
104 Shambayati, op. cit., p. 105.
105 Shambayati and Kirdiş, op. cit., p. 775.
106 E:1986/12 K:1987/4.
107 Ibid.
109 E:1986/12 K:1987/4.
110 To give just one example, in 1994, he gave a speech at the businessmen association in the city of Kocaeli and complained about the increasing number of praying rooms in governmental offices and commercial buildings (see ‘Tavizin sonu mescit’, Milliyet, 29 April 1994.
111 This Kemalist mobilization in civil society can be seen in the founding and prominence of NGOs such as the Atatürkist Thought Association and the Association for Supporting Contemporary Life.
112 General Güreş’s party also made the coalition with the religious Welfare Party, which was the target of the 28 February military involvement. Güreş’s impression of the Welfare Party might be illuminating here: ‘A while ago they came to me from the German press. They asked about the Welfare Party. I said, ‘Why are you exaggerating this matter? You have Christian Democrats, right? They said yes. I replied that the Welfare Party is going towards there [equivalent of Christian Democrats]. (see ‘Gures: Icime Sinmiyor’, Milliyet, 25 October 1996; ‘Ali Sirmen: Yersen’, Milliyet, 26 October 1996).
113 Such as the closure of secondary school level of Imam-Hatip religious schools; see E:1997/62 K:1998/52
114 32.Gün, ‘Özallı Yıllar Belgeseli 5. Bölüm | ‘Takunyalı Hanedan’ | 32.Gün Arşivi’, YouTube video, 39:08, August 31 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEZAqSIJuo0.
115 E:1989/1 K:1989/12.
116 E:1990/36 K:1991/8.
117 Prime Minister Akbulut demanded the recusation of Judge Özden for the case, as his opinions about such issues were publicly known. The plenary of the Court did not accept his request. However, Özden chose not to partake in the concluding plenary (another judge substituted in place) in a gesture trying to prove the respectability and neutrality of the Court. See ‘Akbulut’un Istemine Ret’, Milliyet, 21 February 1991.
118 E:1990/36 K:1991/8.
119 Ibid.
120 Kuru, op. cit., p. 190.
121 Of course, the result was not wholly manipulated as regards calculated appointments of ruling elites or worldview concerns of individual judges strictly. I acknowledge genuine considerations of the legal technicalities still had a sizable influence.
122 ‘Although Evren was certainly sincere in his strong opposition to any attempt to destroy Kemalist secularism, it is also evident that, in the final analysis, he was anxious to help the Ozal government rather than attack it, since he feared the likely consequences of its failure … if the Motherland Party [ANAP] to lose power, then the likely outcome would be a government led by either Demirel or Inonu, or, worse still, a weak coalition. For Evren, none of these prospects was at all enticing: Ozal was regarded with suspicion, due to his concessions to Muslim conservatism, but his government at least had popular support, and its economic and social views were in broad harmony with the generally conservative standpoint of the Turkish army’ (See William Hale, op. cit., p. 298).
123 All judges for the TCC were being selected by the president according to the constitution at that time, but it was not ultimately an unrestricted choice. (See Özbudun, ‘The Political Origins’, op. cit., p. 221).
126 E:1995/17 K:1995/16.
127 Ibid.
128 For another case in which Özden could not persuade the majority of judges for a more secularist stance (E:1996/55 K1997/33), see Bertil Emrah Oder, ‘Laik Devletin Dış İlişkileri ve Anayasa Mahkemesi’, in Prof. Dr. Bulent Tanör Armagani, ed. Mehmet Ö Alkan (İstanbul: Oglak, 2006).
129 E: 1995/25 K: 1996/5.
130 See E:1996/3 K:1997/3; E:2001/349 K:2004/14; E:2008/16 K:2008/116.
131 U. Cizre and Menderes Cinar, ‘Turkey 2002: Kemalism, Islamism, and Politics in the Light of the February 28 Process’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 102:2–3 (1 April 2003), p. 309.
132 See E:1997/62 K:1998/52; E:2001/349 K:2004/14; E:2008/16 K:2008/116; E:1996/3 K:1997/3; E: 1997/1 K: 1998/1; E: 1999/2 K: 2001/2; E: 2001/8 K: 2002/9; E: 2008/1 K: 2008/2.
133 E:1999/27 K:1999/42.
134 Akan, op. cit., p. 7.
135 See Parla and Davison, op. cit.
136 E:1986/12 K:1987/4.
137 T.C. Başbakanlık Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, Milli Kültür: Özel Ihtisas Komisyonu Raporu (Ankara: Devlet Planlama Teskilati, 1984), p. 543.
138 See Ceren Lord, Religious Politics in Turkey: From the Birth of the Republic to the AKP. 1st ed. (Cambridge University Press, 2018).
139 Kuru, op. cit.
140 Gill, op. cit., pp. 47–49.
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Emrah Özdemir
Emrah Özdemir is a lecturer in the Department of Public Administration, Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University. He holds a Ph.D in Political Science from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and MA in History of Political Thought and Intellectual History from Queen Mary, University of London.