scholarly journals The Decline and Resurgence of Turkish Islamism

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-62
Author(s):  
Ihsan Yilmaz ◽  
Greg Barton ◽  
James Barry
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Muslim Country ◽  
Personality Cult ◽  
To Come ◽  
Social Conservatism ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Large Sections ◽  
Muslim Democrats

For decades, Turkish Islamists have failed to attract the votes of large sections of society and remained marginal. As a result of this failure to come to power, and due to domestic and international constraints and windows of opportunities, they have declared that they have jettisoned Islamism. Many Turkish Muslims whose religious disposition was shaped by the pluralistic urban Ottoman experience and small-town Anatolian traditionalism, and by the contesting currents of cosmopolitan pluralism and rural social conservatism, voted in favour of these former Islamists who have become “Muslim Democrats”. This paper elaborates on the genealogy of Turkish Islamists and their political trajectories and argues that when the forces and constraints of domestic and external social, political and economic conditions disappeared and the opportunities derived from being Muslim Democrats no longer existed, the former Islamists easily returned to their original ideology, showing that despite assertions to the contrary their respect for democracy and pluralism had not truly been internalised. This paper also aims to demonstrate that similar to other authoritarian populists, Erdoganists perceive the state and its leader as more important than anything else and as being above everything else, which has culminated in a personality cult and sanctification of the state. As long as Turkey’s economy continued to boom, almost everyone was happy that Turkey could readily market the “Muslim Democrats” story to the whole world for a long period as a major success story, or as an “exemplary Muslim country” or “model”. Yet, Middle Eastern elites and Western forces got carried away and learnt the hard way just how naive their view was in perhaps the first great transformation movement of the twenty-first century – the Arab Spring. Likewise, the Turkish Spring turned all too quickly towards autumn and then winter.

scholarly journals The Decline and Resurgence of Turkish Islamism: The Story of Tayyip Erdoğan’s AKP

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ihsan Yilmaz ◽  
Greg Barton ◽  
James Barry
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Muslim Country ◽  
Personality Cult ◽  
To Come ◽  
Social Conservatism ◽  
The Arab Spring ◽  
Large Sections ◽  
Muslim Democrats

AbstractFor decades, Turkish Islamists have failed to attract the votes of large sections of society and remained marginal. As a result of this failure to come to power, and due to domestic and international constraints and windows of opportunities, they have declared that they have jettisoned Islamism. Many Turkish Muslims whose religious disposition was shaped by the pluralistic urban Ottoman experience and small-town Anatolian traditionalism, and by the contesting currents of cosmopolitan pluralism and rural social conservatism, voted in favour of these former Islamists who have become “Muslim Democrats”. This paper elaborates on the genealogy of Turkish Islamists and their political trajectories and argues that when the forces and constraints of domestic and external social, political and economic conditions disappeared and the opportunities derived from being Muslim Democrats no longer existed, the former Islamists easily returned to their original ideology, showing that despite assertions to the contrary their respect for democracy and pluralism had not truly been internalised. This paper also aims to demonstrate that similar to other authoritarian populists, Erdoganists perceive the state and its leader as more important than anything else and as being above everything else, which has culminated in a personality cult and sanctification of the state. As long as Turkey’s economy continued to boom, almost everyone was happy that Turkey could readily market the “Muslim Democrats” story to the whole world for a long period as a major success story, or as an “exemplary Muslim country” or “model”. Yet, Middle Eastern elites and Western forces got carried away and learnt the hard way just how naive their view was in perhaps the first great transformation movement of the twenty-first century – the Arab Spring. Likewise, the Turkish Spring turned all too quickly towards autumn and then winter.

Regaining the Islamic Centre?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Fauzi Abdul Hamid
Keyword(s):  
Local Politics ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
Muslim Country ◽  
Practical Application ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Islamic Resurgence ◽  
Muslim Majority

This chapter chronicles factors contributing to and implications arising from declining levels of moderation in Muslim-majority societies in the era of global Islamic resurgence by looking at the example of Malaysia, a country that has been classified as a moderate Muslim country. Moderation here is understood in terms of both the intellectual conception of Islamic doctrine and its practical application as a way of life and of relating to others, both Muslim and non-Muslim. It is argued that moderation has taken a beating with the ascendancy of the Wahhabi-Salafi school of thought by especially penetrating Islamic institutions with organic linkages to the state, a phenomenon made worse by the prevalence of authoritarian structures and paternalistic political cultures in post-colonial Muslim societies. In Malaysia, Middle Eastern-influenced Salafization synergized with ethnocentric aspects of local politics to produce a socio-political environment largely antithetical to the country’s pluralist heritage.

scholarly journals What Is the Transnational Turn in American Literary Studies? A Critical Overview

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-159
Author(s):  
Isabel Durán
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
American Studies ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Transnational American Studies ◽  
The Us ◽  
To Come ◽  
Critical Overview

This article presents a critical overview of the state of the art of transnational American studies in the wake of the so-called transnational turn. After an introduction to key ideas and concepts surrounding transnationalism as applied to American studies and, more particularly, to literary studies—including comparative and international approaches to American literature—I interweave critical arguments with brief reviews of keypublications—monographs, edited collections and individual essays—produced in the US and abroad—particularly Spain—in the twenty-first century. My overview mainly focuses on general literary studies, but it also tackles particular areas such as gender, ethnicity, aesthetics and political transnationalism. My conclusion suggests that the transnational turn will continue to shape our scholarship in the decades to come.

scholarly journals Islamist Movements and the Arab Spring

ICR Journal ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 47-73
Author(s):  
Abdullah Al-Arian
Keyword(s):  
Arab Spring ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
Regional Governance ◽  
The State ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Political Survival ◽  
Arab Uprisings ◽  
The Arab Spring

The Arab uprisings of 2011, popularly known as the Arab Spring, were first initiated by a broad range of movements shaped primarily by a non-ideological sense of civic identity. As the uprisings gained momentum, however, Islamist groups were able to utilise their organisational strength and mobilisation capabilities to position themselves at the centre of this watershed moment in modern Middle Eastern history. This article examines the role Islamism came to play in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, notably in the reformulation of the norms of regional governance as authoritarian rule appeared poised to be replaced by a system rooted in democratic legitimacy, independent institutions, and a redefined relationship between the state and its citizens. The article begins with a consideration of the evolution of political Islam in the Arab world, from its origins as a significant social movement actor to its various attempts at political engagement with the state. The articlethen proceeds to a more explicit examine of both political Islams role in the Arab Spring and its apparent intentions for the post-authoritarian order. It is argued that, since the Arab uprisings took place, many Islamist groups have abandoned abstract slogans in favour of coherent political platforms concerned with, amongst other things, the role of Islam in a revised constitution and determining the powers and responsibilities of state institutions. Looking ahead to long-term trends, the interpretation of Shariah, understanding the nature of the civil state, and the shape of democratic participation appear set to become crucial issues within Islamist discourse. The realities of rule, requiring pragmatism and compromise, will almost certainly challenge the ideological orientation of political Islam in the coming years, as Islamists come to realise that political survival is predicated not on ideological purity but on practical results.

The Open Society and the Democracy to Come: Bergson, Deleuze and Guattari

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Baugh
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
The State ◽  
Open Society ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
The People ◽  
To Come ◽  
Polar Opposite ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Gain Access

In Bergsonism, Deleuze refers to Bergson's concept of an ‘open society’, which would be a ‘society of creators’ who gain access to the ‘open creative totality’ through acting and creating. Deleuze and Guattari's political philosophy is oriented toward the goal of such an open society. This would be a democracy, but not in the sense of the rule of the actually existing people, but the rule of ‘the people to come,’ for in the actually existing situation, such a people is ‘lacking’. When the people becomes a society of creators, the result is a society open to the future, creativity and the new. Their openness and creative freedom is the polar opposite of the conformism and ‘herd mentality’ condemned by Deleuze and Nietzsche, a mentality which is the basis of all narrow nationalisms (of ethnicity, race, religion and creed). It is the freedom of creating and commanding, not the Kantian freedom to obey Reason and the State. This paper uses Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, and Deleuze and Guattari's Kafka: For a Minor Literature, A Thousand Plateaus and What is Philosophy? to sketch Deleuze and Guattari's conception of the open society and of a democracy that remains ‘to come’.

Music and Memory: The Tlatelolco Refrain

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Josh Kun
Keyword(s):  
State Violence ◽  
First Century ◽  
Student Movements ◽  
Octavio Paz ◽  
Mexican History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rock Bands ◽  
To Come ◽  
Musical Memory ◽  
A Current

Ever since the 1968 student movements and the events surrounding the Tlatelolco massacre, Mexico City rock bands have openly engaged with the intersection of music and memory. Their songs offer audiences a medium through which to come to terms with the events of the past as a means of praising a broken world, to borrow the poet Adam Zagajewski’s phrase. Contemporary songs such as Saúl Hernández’s “Fuerte” are a twenty-first-century voicing of the ceaseless revolutionary spirit that John Gibler has called “Mexico unconquered,” a current of rebellion and social hunger for justice that runs in the veins of Mexican history. They are the latest additions to what we might think about as “the Mexico unconquered songbook”: musical critiques of impunity and state violence that are rooted in the weaponry of memory, refusing to focus solely on the present and instead making connections with the political past. What Octavio Paz described as a “swash of blood” that swept across “the international subculture of the young” during the events in Tlatelolco Plaza on October 2, 1968, now becomes a refrain of musical memory and political consciousness that extends across eras and generations. That famous phrase of Paz’s is a reminder that these most recent Mexican musical interventions, these most recent formations of a Mexican subculture of the young, maintain a historically tested relationship to blood, death, loss, and violence.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Winter
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Rich Diversity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Oppression ◽  
The Rich ◽  
To Come

This concluding chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. The book has shown that the multiplicity of lived ʻAlawi experiences cannot be reduced to the sole question of religion or framed within a monolithic narrative of persecution; that the very attempt to outline a single coherent history of “the ʻAlawis” may indeed be misguided. The sources on which this study has drawn are considerably more accessible, and the social and administrative realities they reflect consistently more mundane and disjointed, than the discourse of the ʻAlawis' supposed exceptionalism would lead one to believe. Therefore, the challenge for historians of ʻAlawi society in Syria and elsewhere is not to use the specific events and structures these sources detail to merely add to the already existing metanarratives of religious oppression, Ottoman misrule, and national resistance but rather to come to a newer and more intricate understanding of that community, and its place in wider Middle Eastern society, by investigating the lives of individual ʻAlawi (and other) actors within the rich diversity of local contexts these sources reveal.

Cracking national integration after the events (the Arab Spring) and its impact On regional stability

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Muhannad Al Janabi Al Janabi
Keyword(s):  
Arab Spring ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Prominent Feature ◽  
Regional Stability ◽  
National Integration ◽  
Arab Region ◽  
Political Media ◽  
The Stability ◽  
The Arab Spring

Since late 2010 and early 2011, the Arab region has witnessed mass protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Bahrain and other countries that have been referred to in the political, media and other literature as the Arab Spring. These movements have had a profound effect on the stability of the regimes Which took place against it, as leaders took off and contributed to radical reforms in party structures and public freedoms and the transfer of power, but it also contributed to the occurrence of many countries in an internal spiral, which led to the erosion of the state from the inside until it became a prominent feature of the Arab) as is the case in Syria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq.

The Baluch, Sunnism and the State in Iran

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stéphane A. Dudoignon
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Local Democracy ◽  
Oasis Area ◽  
Shed Light

Since 2002, Sunni jihadi groups have been active in Iranian Baluchistan without managing to plunge the region into chaos. This book suggests that a reason for this, besides Tehran’s military responses, has been the quality of Khomeini and Khamenei’s relationship with a network of South-Asia-educated Sunni ulama (mawlawis) originating from the Sarbaz oasis area, in the south of Baluchistan. Educated in the religiously reformist, socially conservative South Asian Deoband School, which puts the madrasa at the centre of social life, the Sarbazi ulama had taken advantage, in Iranian territory, of the eclipse of Baluch tribal might under the Pahlavi monarchy (1925-79). They emerged then as a bulwark against Soviet influence and progressive ideologies, before rallying to Khomeini in 1979. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, they have been playing the role of a rampart against Salafi propaganda and Saudi intrigues. The book shows that, through their alliance with an Iranian Kurdish-born Muslim-Brother movement and through the promotion of a distinct ‘Sunni vote’, they have since the early 2000s contributed towards – and benefitted from – the defence by the Reformist presidents Khatami (1997-2005) and Ruhani (since 2013) of local democracy and of the minorities’ rights. They endeavoured to help, at the same time, preventing the propagation of jihadism and Sunni radicalisation to Iran – at least until the ISIS/Daesh-claimed attacks of June 2017, in Tehran, shed light on the limits of the Islamic Republic’s strategy of reliance on Deobandi ulama and Muslim-Brother preachers in the country’s Sunni-peopled peripheries.

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