Abstract:
Reza Dehghani*
Abstract
What are the ideological and social origins of the Turkish
Islamist parties? To what extent are these political parties,
interpreters of the conflicts and gaps in Turkish society? The
author argues that the nature of the Turkish Islamist parties has
its origin in the type and form of the Islamic belief in the said
parties which in turn is a derivation of the Sufi creeds. The
emergence of the Turkish Islamist parties and their rise to power
is a reaction to the rejection of the Turkish Islamic heritage,
imperative modernist of the Kemalist system and the inefficiency
of the Turkish secular governments. The model used in this article
is that of the historical sociology of political parties developed by
the Norwegian theoretician, Stein Rokkan. Accordingly, this
article tries to review the role played by the Turkish social
conflicts in the emergence of the Islamist parties in their rise to
power. What this article is trying to find is the social ancestry of
the Turkish Islamist parties, the role of social conflicts and gaps in
the emergence and development of the Islamist parties including
the AKP’s rise to political power.
Machine summary:
"In fact the emergence and presence of these parties in Turkey's political domain could be considered as a reaction to the rejection of and the fight against the Islamic heritage of Turkish society, the imperative modernism of the Kemalist system and the inefficiency of the secular governments in the economic and social domains.
3. Teachings of Turkish Secularism; The Deepest Social Gap in Turkey Secularism is the tendency that advocates and promulgates separation of indifference and marginalization of religion in various fields of human life including politics, government, science, rationality, ethics and etc.
Gaining political power • Popularstruggles and uprisings From the foundation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923 to it entering the open political setting in 1950, which can be regarded as the first stage of the Islamist trends in Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, leading the secularist movement in Turkey seized power by defeating other major ideological trends like extremist nationalism, Ottomanism and Islamism, prohibiting all Islamist activities including Sufism, founding a secular, West-oriented government.
i'" Mustafa Kemal's persisting fight against the Islamic thoughts, created fast socio-political changes in a new form and under an authoritarian single-party government in order to reach the gates of the Western civilization in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.
Rather, the Sufism and sectarian atmosphere in Turkey along the political activity of the renowned Islamist parties have nurtured sects and trends with an Islamic background, however, with different approaches, each bearing a certain role and impact on certain spectrums of the people and society."