Religion as a Pillar of the Ottoman Order and as an Ethnic Marker

The Ottoman legacy fundamentally shaped the contours of Turkish nation building in a manner that was to give rise to the possibility and eventual success of religio-politics in the Turkish Republic. The high levels of social closure and the delineation of majority–minority boundaries along religious lines during the establishment of the Republic in 1923 can be traced to the Ottoman Empire’s political and social structure and the dynamics unleashed during its transformation from the eighteenth century, which was followed by its eventual disintegration. The Empire was multi-ethnic and multi-religious, but Islam, and thereby, the ulema, alongside the military class, were key pillars of the semitheocratic monarchy (Zürcher Reference Zürcher2004: 11–13). This dual system of legitimacy based on both Islam and the state is encapsulated in the notion of din-u-devlet (religion and state) (Azak Reference Azak2010: 2–3). One reflection of this in the late Ottoman Empire was the sultan’s status as the head of the Ottoman state and caliph,Footnote ⁴ making him the leader and protector of the faith and ummah (the Muslim community). Second was the existence of imperial laws (kanun) sourced from the sultan, which stood alongside Islamic law (Azak Reference Azak2010: 2–3; İnalcık Reference İnalcık2001: 333–336; Imber Reference Imber2002: 244; Keddie Reference Keddie1972: 42; Sunar and Toprak 2007: 4). Third, the institutionalisation and integration over centuries of the ulema, the Islamic religious authority, into the Ottoman state had resulted in the increasing prominence of the role of the Sheikh ul-Islam (Toprak Reference Toprak1981: 30–31). As chief of the ulema, the Sheikh ul-Islam emerged as a key actor in decision-making, second only to the sultan (as his appointee) and on a par with the grand vizier. In theory, laws and decisions had to comply with Islamic law (shari’a), which empowered the ulema and raised their standing. In practice, disobedience of the sultan was rare, and he ruled through a combination of religious laws and sultanic decrees based on customary law and practices (Toprak Reference Toprak1981: 1–2). In fact, by the eighteenth century, the ensuing modernisation drive had largely resulted in confining Islamic law to matters of family law and ownership (Zürcher Reference Zürcher2004: 10).

Alongside this symbolic and legal weaving together of Islam and the state, the social structure was highly stratified, and within it, religion was a communal trait that ‘demarcated ethnic groups and defined these as religious communities’ (Göçek Reference Göçek1993: 513). This ‘ethnic segmentation’ (Göçek Reference Göçek1996: 114) was operationalised in the millet system, which had emerged as a practical arrangement of rule over diverse populations as the Empire expanded (Barkey Reference Barkey2005; Karpat Reference Karpat, Braude and Lewis1982). Based on Islamic principles, this framework was systematised only during the Tanzimat reforms in the nineteenth century, but never fully codified (Barkey Reference Barkey2005; Braude Reference Braude, Braude and Lewis1980). Within a hierarchical social structure in which Muslims (the millet-i hakime, or ‘sovereign nation’) were positioned at the top and ruled the lands, the millets comprised religiously defined communities (only non-Muslims who were recognised by Islam as ‘people of the book’) in which each enjoyed a degree of administrative autonomy over areas pertaining to personal law, religion, education and judicial matters (Göçek Reference Göçek1993: 513; Karpat Reference Karpat, Braude and Lewis1982; Ortaylı Reference Ortaylı2001). This segmentation and stratification on the basis of religion was reinforced by various legal and social codes and restrictions, including different dress, different taxation and a system of privileges and exemptions that not only enforced ‘a cognitive sense of their difference in relation to other communities’ but also restricted interaction between communities (Göçek Reference Göçek1993: 513, Reference Göçek1996; Karpat Reference Karpat2001). Being a Muslim (by birth or conversion) was also a requirement for statesmen wishing to climb to higher ranks (Toprak Reference Toprak1981: 1–2).

The Growing Salience of Religious Markers in the Late Empire

The polarisation of this system of ethnic segmentation, heightening the levels of social closure, was spurred on by a confluence of developments, including growing economic and political European imperial penetration following successive Ottoman military defeats and the ongoing loss of territories following the Battle of Vienna (1683). For instance, in 1774, significant concessions were granted to Russia by the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, which included ceding greater rights over the Greek Orthodox subjects of the Empire (Ahmad Reference Ahmad2000: 2–3). Likewise, in return for British help to thwart the challenge posed to the Empire by the governor of Egypt, Mehmet Ali Pasha, the Porte had fully opened up Ottoman markets to British merchants (and its allies, including France) with the 1838 Anglo-Ottoman commercial Treaty of Balta Limanı.

Consequently, from the eighteenth century onwards, increasingly focused on the issue of how to save the state, the Ottoman state sought to counter the rising military, commercial and industrial strength of Europe with a modernisation and centralisation drive that went beyond mere reform of the military. Starting with the New Order (Nizam-ı Cedit) programme of Sultan Selim III (1789–1807) and continuing with the Tanzimat era (1839–1871), the Ottoman state undertook a series of extensive reforms that resulted in a transformation of the structure and the basis of legitimacy of the state. Common to empires of continental size comprising multi-ethnic and multi-religious communities, in an age marked by rising nation-states and the diffusion of the concept of popular sovereignty following the French Revolution, the Ottoman state was increasingly faced with a legitimacy crisis, particularly beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century (Deringil Reference Deringil1998: 166). The state’s efforts to develop ideological legitimations to address the legitimacy crisis during this period were subsequently summarised as Ottomanism, pan-Islamism and Turkism (discussed further below) by one of the key ideologues of Turkish nationalism, Yusuf Akçura, in his 1904 essay entitled ‘Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset’ (‘Three Ways of Politics’). In reality, all three currents, which proposed different legitimating constructions of a reliable social base, were intertwined, with different elements being stressed at different times and, as Bein (Reference Bein2007: 614) argues, ‘hardly any Ottoman thinker argued for one of these referents to the exclusion of others. Instead, major controversies revolved around what should be the prevailing component in the state’s official ideology.’ Equally, Hanioğlu (Reference Hanioğlu2010: 4) has remarked that ‘Young Ottoman constitutionalism, rooted as it was in Islamic principles, and later Young Turk constitutionalism, grounded in an intensely secular outlook, are greater than many would care to admit’.

Emerging in the early nineteenth century, Ottomanism involved efforts to constitute a territorially based Ottoman national identity by unifying different communities within the Empire based on the equality of all subjects regardless of religious affiliation or ethnic origin. The aim was to stem the tide of nationalism and was also driven by the desire to eliminate the privileges enjoyed by non-Muslim communities (under the capitulations regime) in order to undermine the basis of imperial penetration which had become a key policy goal of the Sublime Porte (the central government) by 1839 (Ahmad Reference Ahmad2000: 1; Zürcher Reference Zürcher2004: 56). Such ideas were reflected during the Tanzimat era, when a series of modernising reforms, including the military, central bureaucracy and education, in part continuous with previous efforts, were promulgated between 1839 and 1871. Hanioğlu (Reference Hanioğlu2010: 87) notes that the 1839 edict ‘revealed the wish to establish a single system for all subjects; it indicated a change in the official ideology of the state […] the imperial edict was a significant first step toward the transformation of the hitherto Muslim, Christian, and Jewish subjects into Ottomans’. Reformist bureaucrats tried to address the legitimacy question by various means. Following this, the 1856 reform edict granted non-Muslim subjects legal equality for the first time, which was codified in the Ottoman Nationality Law of 1869. In 1876, the first Ottoman constitution (Kânûn-i Esâsî, Fundamental Law) was adopted, comprising equality of non-Muslims (Article 8) and establishing a parliament for which both Muslims and non-Muslims were elected following polls in 1877.Footnote ⁵ This experience was to prove brief, however, as the sultan, who remained the ultimate power in the land, ended the first constitutional period in 1878, proroguing the elected parliament for thirty years until the 1908 revolution.

However, these reforms and the underpinning ideas of Ottomanism were at odds with the existing social structure underpinned by the millet system. Neither the imperial powers nor the non-Muslim subjects necessarily wanted to forego their privileges or relative autonomy under the millets (Zürcher Reference Zürcher2004: 56). Since the eighteenth century, in particular, imperial penetration had reinforced the economic ascendancy of non-Muslim subjects of the Empire (Göçek Reference Göçek1996; Karpat Reference Karpat2001; Kuran Reference Kuran2004). Over time, increasing numbers of non-Muslim subjects employed by foreign powers in different capacities were incorporated within the remit of the capitulations regime, which referred to various economic and political privileges and concessions granted to foreign powers. This enabled them to gain significant privileges (e.g. tax exemptions) and, eventually, protection by Western powers that placed them in a preferential position compared with that of Muslim merchants (Ahmad Reference Ahmad2000: 5; Göçek Reference Göçek1996: 93, 97). Göçek (Reference Göçek1996: 96) notes that, owing to the rise of Western trade and the Europeans’ exclusive association with the non-Muslim minorities of the Ottoman Empire, Ottoman merchants therefore increasingly came to ‘differentiate their fields of activity according to religion’.Footnote ⁶ Ethnic and social segmentation had also been reinforced by the modernisation reforms, including the introduction of Western-type education and the exposure to Enlightenment ideas, as well as Muslim migration from the Balkans and Russia together with the Ottoman state’s migration and settlement policies. Together, these dynamics resulted in the bifurcation of the bourgeoisie (Göçek Reference Göçek1996; Karpat Reference Karpat2001: 93–97), whereby class divisions and factions increasingly became delineated along religious lines. These reinforced communal boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims and resulted in their heightened political salience in the late Empire.

Consequently, the granting of equality also met with resistance from the Empire’s Muslim subjects, alongside factions within the bureaucracy itself (Hanioğlu Reference Hanioğlu2010: 88; Zürcher Reference Zürcher1984: 4, Reference Zürcher2010: 277). For instance, Akçura notes that the failure of Ottomanism was partly owing to the negative views of equal citizenship held by Muslims and Turks, who were reluctant to give up ‘600 years of sovereignty’, as well as Islamic doctrine which would not accept the equality of non-Muslims (1976). The trauma and polarisation caused by the Tanzimat reforms and the granting of equality, at times leading to violent reactions by Muslim subjects (Göçek Reference Göçek1993: 517, Reference Göçek1996: 114; Kara Reference Kara, Koraltürk, Bora and Alkan2007; Taştan Reference Taştan2012), was also described in 1872 by the Ottoman statesman Ahmed Cevdet Pasha (related by Göçek Reference Göçek1993: 517) in his memoirs:

Neither had the declaration of legal equality been enough to end the capitulations regime, and the continued imperial economic penetration and capitalist integration with Europe extended the economic demise of Muslim subjects vis-à-vis non-Muslims. Consequently, the granting of equality to non-Muslims came to be perceived by Muslim subjects not only as the loss of their politically privileged status but also as involving the expansion of the (political and economic) privileges of the non-Muslims (Kara Reference Kara, Koraltürk, Bora and Alkan2007: 164–165). Indeed, Zürcher (Reference Zürcher2010: 276) has argued in this manner that:

The Tanzimat reforms, together with previous efforts, had resulted in lasting transformation of the state bureaucracy, education and judicial systems, but Ottomanism, in short, was unsuccessful in stemming the spread of nationalisms in the Empire whereby the religiously defined millets had already begun to form the basis of nascent ethno-national communities (Berkes Reference Berkes1964: 96).

The increasing propagation of pan-Islamism during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876–1909) was in part a response to rising nationalism, the Russian expansion into Muslim lands which saw the loss of vast non-Muslim populations during the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War and the politicisation of Muslim identity catalysed by the sense of loss of privileged status and competition over resources (see Chapter 5 for further discussion on the impact on Islamism). Until this period, despite the importance of Islam, identity and doctrine had been fluid in the Empire’s more than 600 years of existence across different territories (Ergül Reference Ergül2012: 631). Indeed, the Empire had emerged at the end of the fifteenth century with a Christian majority population. Subsequent Muslimisation of the population and an emphasis on Sunni doctrine had followed the conquest of Arab lands during the reign of Selim I (1516–1518), the seizure of the caliphate by the Ottoman dynasty with the conquest of Egypt and the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514 against the Shi’a-dominated Safavid Empire. By the late nineteenth century, war, migration and Russian expansion into the Crimea had resulted in pronounced demographic changes and mass Muslim migration into the Empire. The Muslim population had risen from 59.6 per cent in the 1820s to 76.2 per cent by the 1890s (Dündar Reference Dündar2011: 56; Karpat Reference Karpat1985). This was to be followed by the near elimination of the non-Muslim populations by the establishment of the Republic, through, among other cases of ethnic cleansing, the Armenian Genocide in 1915, involving the massacre of an estimated million people. These demographic shifts occurred at a time when there was an increased focus on the numerical size of the various communities in the Empire which gained importance for claims of national and territorial rights. Indeed, it was only in the last decades of the Empire that the term ekalliyet (‘minority’) was introduced (Ortaylı Reference Ortaylı2012: 16) and the very rise of modern nation-states made the categories of majority and minority relevant (B. T. White Reference White2011: 27).Footnote ⁷ Indeed, the development of national consciousness or nation building involves not just a process of majoritisation in which there is an attempt to homogenise heterogeneity, but an attendant emergence of minorities or minoritisation of elements that do not fit this constructed majority bloc and who are marginalised and viewed as suspect (Williams Reference Williams1989: 435; Wimmer Reference Wimmer2002: 62–63). Consequently, not only did the elites become cognisant of the majority–minority numerical balance, but also, the delineation of these boundaries along religious lines was augmented through demographic changes and the spread of nationalism (Kale Reference Kale2014: 256, 259; Karpat Reference Karpat1985).

Within this context, the Hamidian period marked the first self-conscious drive to construct a homogenous social base, involving an emphasis on (Hanefi) Sunni Islamic doctrine and identity alongside a focus on Turkish identity, which was propagated particularly in military schools (Alkan Reference Alkan and Ergut2009: 64–66; Deringil Reference Deringil1998: 48; Zürcher Reference Zürcher2010: 274). As Zürcher (Reference Zürcher2010: 274) notes, ‘In order to increase solidarity and unity on the basis of Islam, a single, standardized and controlled form of “national” or Ottoman Islam had to be promoted.’ However, while the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars and loss of Christian lands had largely undermined Ottomanism, subsequent revolts and loss of (Muslim majority) Arab lands played a role in weakening pan-Islamism.Footnote ⁸ Consequently, there was a greater shift towards both Islamism (Kayalı Reference Kayalı1997: 8) and Turkish nationalism with the ascent of the Young Turk movement as the ITC (Hanioğlu Reference Hanioğlu1995; Kushner Reference Kushner1977) began to assert greater power following the restoration of the constitution in 1908, eventually seizing power in 1913. Yet even if pan-Islamism as a political project became less desirable by the end of the First World War, Islam and Muslim identity remained constitutive elements of Turkish nationalism. As Ziya Gökalp, a major nationalist ideologue of the ITC and later the Republic, declared, ‘I belong to the Turkish nation, the Islamic ummah, and Western civilisation.’ His focus on synthesising what he identified as the necessary processes of Turkification, Islamisation and modernisation to save the state and ‘catch up’ with the West epitomised the ITC’s ideology during the second constitutional period, effectively reversing Abdülhamid’s Islamic–Turkish synthesis into a Turkish–Islamic synthesis (TIS) and subsequently underpinning nation building in the early Republic (Alkan Reference Alkan and Ergut2009: 64; Davison Reference Davison1995). According to Tunaya, the ITC was as Islamist as it was Turkish nationalist (Tunaya Reference Tunaya1952).

Indeed, the dynamics of class bifurcation and ethnic segmentation based on religion fundamentally shaped the evolving nationalist consciousness and movement. For the ITC, the construction of a ‘national bourgeoisie’ (Toprak Reference Toprak1995) came to be regarded as a vital element of nation building given the disintegrating Empire and an economy dominated by non-Muslim subjects, whose interests were seen to be beholden to their external sponsors and partners under the capitulations regime. However, Turkification of the economy or creation of a national economy essentially involved state efforts to expand and advantage a Muslim bourgeoisie and to create a Muslim Turkish majority based and dominated economy. These policies accelerated in the second constitutional period and particularly following the Balkan Wars (Koraltürk Reference Koraltürk2011: 30–31, 56; Toprak Reference Toprak1995: 19), supported by campaigns such as the Muslim boycott in 1913–1914 of non-Muslim businesses accused of supporting the enemy side (Toprak Reference Toprak1995: 5). The ITC gained an opportunity with the outbreak of the First World War to push ahead with its efforts to establish a national (in effect, Muslim) bourgeoisie and abrogate the privileges of non-Muslim subjects enjoyed under the capitulations regime. In large part, however, Muslim domination of the economy (see Chapter 4 for further discussion) was achieved by war and demographic engineering, including migration, population exchanges, genocide and ethnic cleansing which together enabled the (violent) transfer of wealth from non-Muslim to Muslim subjects of the Ottoman Empire and, later, citizens of the Republic (Koraltürk Reference Koraltürk2011: 56). Around a million orthodox Christians had migrated to Greece by 1922, while the population exchange agreed upon at the Lausanne Convention in 1923 led to the transfer of a further 1.5 million Orthodox Christians to Greece in exchange for around 0.5 million Muslims sent to Turkey (Kolluoğlu Reference Kolluoğlu2013: 536–539).

The 1921 Constitution

When the first constitution of the Republic was adopted in 1921, questions about the precise nature of the nascent nation-state, fundamental principles and the role of religion had largely been left untouched or postponed. This was because the Teşkilat-ı Esasiye (Law of Fundamental Organization, or 1921 Constitution) had been adopted by the nationalist movement in the midst of the independence struggle (1919–1923) to establish a new executive authority and parliament based in Ankara, against the Ottoman government in İstanbul that was subjugated by occupation forces. As a result, it was a short document, reflecting the need to hold a diverse coalition together during a time of war. While the independence struggle (which came together as the defence of rights associations) was largely mobilised by the ITC cadres, they had also co-opted ITC army officers, members of the ulema and other local elites into the national movement (Zürcher Reference Zürcher2004: 148; Reference Zürcher2010: 221–222). Consequently, the first parliamentary period (1920–1923) and the 1921 constitutional drafters were relatively pluralistic, comprising a coalition of different factions, actors and movements with different political visions for the new state, from Bolshevism to Islamism and conservatism (Akın Reference Akın2001: 52–53) and with different ethnic and religious backgrounds (such as Kurdish and Alevi), who had joined forces during war. Out of 380 lawmakers, 18 per cent were members of the ulema and tariqa sheikhs, which does not include Islamists such as Mehmet Akif, who were also in the assembly (Akın Reference Akın2001: 49–50; Aktürk Reference Aktürk2015: 789; Akyol Reference Akyol2008: 145), while soldiers comprised 13 per cent, civil servants and retirees 30 per cent, farmers 12 per cent and merchants 10 per cent (Aydemir Reference Aydemir1976: 365).Footnote ⁹ The nationalist coalition, as Bein notes, was a ‘big tent’ under which diverging ideological and sociocultural groups came together (Reference Bein2011: 105). Still, boundaries between them were fluid and overlapping rather than polarised, and crucially, Islam was a common denominator of this political alliance.

During this period of constitution making under conditions of war, lawmakers were focused particularly on immediate matters, such as establishing the basis of representation and the extent of local government. Where there was disagreement, the matter was temporarily resolved through a fudge, or compromise. Indeed, several lawmakers resisted the introduction of the concept of national sovereignty, arguing that sovereignty could only rest with God and that the nationalist assembly could not contravene the 1876 constitution, which placed sovereignty in the ‘sacred’ person of the sultan-caliph. This had resulted in various revisions to the final document, including a reference to the enforcement of shari’a (Article 7), which outlined the legal remit of the TBMM, the replacement of the word meclis (‘parliament’) with shura in order to reflect what some lawmakers described as the Muslim character of the population, and a direct link to the 1876 constitution (Özbudun Reference Özbudun1992: 37). Equally controversial was the matter of the caliphate’s future after the Constitutional Commission removed an article referring to a commitment to the rescue and reinstatement of the sultan-caliph following independence. The lawmakers had only dropped their insistence on a direct reference to the caliph after reassurances by Mustafa Kemal and his supporters that the primary goal of the TBMM was the protection of the sultan-caliph and that it would be unwise to abandon the office given its importance to the Islamic world. Consequently, the 1921 Constitution emerged to some extent as a contradictory document in comprising both the principle of national sovereignty and shari’a (Özbudun Reference Özbudun1992: 37) alongside the continued reference to the 1876 Constitution.

Despite this diversity in the first assembly, there was, nevertheless, consensus on the people whom the constitution addressed. For one, a common denominator was that all of the members were Muslim, as required by the electoral rules prepared by the Committee of Representation (Heyet-i Temsiliye), which was the executive of the independence movement, despite the fact that non-Muslims still comprised around one-tenth of the population (Aktürk Reference Aktürk2015: 789; Okutan Reference Okutan2004:148). While no reference was made to Turkish national identity in the constitutional debates or the final codified 1921 document, nation-state builders clearly conceptualised their role as representatives of Muslim subjects remaining in the Ottoman territories. An explicit reference to the ‘Islamic majority’ was inserted into the 1921 parliamentary declaration outlining the duties of the TBMM (Özbudun Reference Özbudun1992: 22), which was conceived as the embodiment and representative of the Muslim community. As Zürcher notes, the political and military leaders of the independence struggle were motivated by what he has described as a type of Ottoman–Muslim nationalism – ‘the nationalist programme is based on an ethnicity whose membership is determined largely by religious affiliation’ (Yavuz Reference Yavuz2003: 45; Zürcher Reference Zürcher2010: 229–231) – which also meant minimising the number of non-Muslims within the remaining territories. Indeed, this was a reflection of the high levels of social closure at the end of the Empire, and as such, the approach towards non-Muslim minorities was dismissive and exclusionary. This was spelt out by a prominent Turkish nationalist member of the Constitutional Commission, Mahmut Esat (Bozkurt) Bey, who declared that the fears relating to Christians entering parliament were misplaced because Muslims constituted the majority and Christians had lost their rights since ‘they resigned from citizenship owing to their betrayal [during the late Ottoman Empire]’ (ZC 7 November 1336: 43).Footnote ¹⁰ This concern with the construction and elevation of the Sunni Muslim, and later, Turkish, majority was to remain a key concern of decision-makers and political actors in subsequent periods of constitution making.

Nationalising State Building and Constitution Making in the 1920s

Nation-state builders waited until after the end of the War of Independence and declaration of the Turkish Republic in 1923 to tackle fundamental questions about the shape and nature of the nascent state. As Zürcher (Reference Zürcher2010: 223) notes, the principle of self-determination of the ‘Turkish parts of the Ottoman Empire’ articulated in President Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points outlined in 1918, had been a crucial reference point for the resistance movement. Indeed, Turkish nationalism had been gaining currency among Ottoman elites and politics from the early 1900s. By the end of the war and the negotiations at Lausanne in 1923, the Ankara government was keen to overturn the 1920 Sèvres Treaty which had partitioned Ottoman lands between the imperial powers and included the creation of an independent Armenian Republic in major concessions to Greece and a Kurdish entity. The decisions made in this period would prove consequential for the nature of religion and state relations. Even during periods of heightened contingency, however, antecedent conditions and institutional and political legacies are important in influencing the range of options and paths available for actors (Koinova Reference Koinova2013). In this vein, nation-state builders in the 1920s faced two crucial antecedent conditions with respect to religion. First, they confronted the intertwined relationship between Islam and state, symbolically and legally, as well as the integration of the ulema within the Ottoman state, which had evolved over centuries. The second legacy was the emergence of religious categories as ethnic markers owing to a confluence of developments, including the polarisation of ethnic segmentation under the millet system, war, the dynamics of class formation influenced by imperial penetration and demographic shifts involving the devastation of the non-Muslim population and the Muslimisation of the land (Karpat Reference Karpat2001). This underpinned the high level of social closure in the late 1920s, which was further exacerbated by ongoing international pressure (the Treaty of Lausanne on the treatment of minorities) and historical memory (including the traumas relating to the break-up of the Empire, minority nationalisms and the so-called Sèvres mentality – fear of the designs of Western powers to divide the country; see Robins [Reference Robins2003: 103–105]). Consequently, the prevalent forms of social closure by the establishment of the Republic in 1923 were based on religious delineations.

The ways in which nation building influences constitution making and how national identity is codified reflect the specific legacies faced by state builders. Kissane and Sitter (Reference Kissane and Sitter2010a, Reference Kissane and Sitter2010b) have differentiated between the earlier European constitutional tradition whereby constitutions represented a contract between different actors regarding the distribution of power, and the later constitutions adopted following the collapse of empires in the aftermath of the First World War, which drew a more explicit link between national identity and the constitution. The Turkish constitutional experience reflected the latter tradition in being explicitly nationalist and majoritising rather than a liberal effort to constrain and set bounds on the exercise of power. Accordingly, the Turkish state which emerged in the 1920s was not just a national but also a ‘nationalising’ one, concerned with establishing a core nation that involved the elevation and construction of a dominant majority ethnicity that was to be the owner of the state (Brubaker Reference Brubaker2011). Additionally, owing to the prevalent forms of social closure in this period, this involved the construction and claim to primacy of a Sunni (Hanefi) Muslim Turkish majority. This, in turn, was reflected in the construction of the principle of laicism and the manner in which state–religion relations were institutionalised.

From the establishment of the Republic on 29 October 1923, the parliament adopted sweeping reforms. To begin with, Islam was explicitly included in the constitution as the state religion, together with the declaration of the Republic. This was greeted by the prominent Turkish nationalist and writer Mehmet Emin Yurdakul with, ‘Today the Turkish nation has established at Ankara what Prophet Muhammed established fourteen centuries ago within the walls of Mecca’ (ZC 29 October 1339 [1923]: 96). This was followed by chants of ‘long live the Republic’ within the assembly and a statement by Sheikh Saffet Efendi (a prominent member of the ulema and a deputyFootnote ¹¹) that the inclusion of Islam had only made explicit the underlying principle of the Teşkilat-ı Esasiye, which he declared was more Islamic than the 1876 Constitution (ZC 29 October 1339 [1923]: 96–97). However, on 3 March 1924, three major constitutional amendments significantly altered the nature of the state–religion relationship by undermining the socio-legal status of Islam through a significant narrowing of the role of the ulema. This included the unification of education (Tevhid-i Tedrisat, Article 430), resulting in the closure of the medreses; the abolition of the ŞEV (Article 429), which was replaced by the Diyanet; and most controversially, the abolition of the caliphate (Article 431). With the exception of the latter, these amendments generated little debate in parliament. By this period, oppositional voices had been silenced to a great extent with the increasing hold on the national assembly of Mustafa Kemal’s First Group – from which he would form the People’s Party (Halk Fırkası, which was subsequently renamed as the CHP) – following the 28 June 1923 elections and his manoeuvrings that limited the participation of opponents during the vote on the amendments (Demirel Reference Demirel2013: 66–67). Moreover, in a somewhat shrewd move, the bills for the abolition of the caliphate and the ŞEV were proposed by members of the ulema, who argued that the caliphate was not an Islamic requirement, noting that, in any case, other schools of Sunni Islam had not generally recognised the claim to the caliphate of the (Hanefi) Sunni Ottoman rulers.

Subsequently, the adoption of the Swiss Civil Code in 1926 had left no further dominion for shari’a, and in 1928, what remained largely as a symbolic reference to Islam was removed from the constitution, while at the same time, the alphabet was also Latinised. The principle of laicism, previously incorporated into the CHP’s programme in 1931 as part of six main principles – republicanism, nationalism, populism, statism and revolutionism (or reformism) – that comprised the six arrows of the party logo, was finally incorporated into the constitution in 1937. The six arrows came to represent what was called Kemalism, or Atatürkism, in the 1930s, forming ‘the basis for indoctrination in schools, the media, and the army’ (Zürcher Reference Zürcher2004: 128). Lawmakers reasoned that these amendments were necessary to respond to the needs of the times and the desire to reflect the political programme of the state to legally express the nation’s commitment to Atatürk’s principles and ‘not rest the state and nation’s administration in mystical and dogmatic principles’ (ZC 5 February 1937: 60). Evincing anti-clericalism, lawmakers blamed the ulema for the ‘disasters’ that had befallen the Turks (ZC 5 February 1937: 60). This was the contention of Interior Minister Şükrü Kaya, who declared:

Yet the emergence of laicism had been reflective of a power struggle within the state, which involved the elevation of one faction of the independence struggle coalition over others. Indeed, as Calhoun et al. argue,

Using Chaves’s (Reference Chaves1994: 750, 756) depiction, secularisation reforms in this period can therefore be characterised as a decline in the scope of religious authority rather than a decline or ‘cleansing’ of religion, which was crucially subject to change over time. In this vein, marking the dominance of Mustafa Kemal’s faction, the composition of the second national assembly following the 1923 election was far less pluralistic compared to the first one between 1921 and 1923. Yet, while this essentially involved the sidelining of what has typically been considered to be the more conservative Second Group of the first assembly, Koçak notes that it would be misleading to conclude that there was much difference between the two assemblies (Reference Koçak2005; Akın Reference Akın2001: 59). However, debate and divisions remained, becoming pronounced in the 1930s with the emergence of socialist-oriented (e.g. the Kadro intellectualsFootnote ¹²) and traditionalist-socialist circles within the elites and extraparliamentary groups (Çetinsaya Reference Çetinsaya1999: 366; İrem Reference İrem2002: 96).

In any case, the unfolding of secularisation laws from 1924, together with the adoption of martial law in March 1925 in the wake of the Sheikh Said Rebellion, had facilitated the ascent and consolidation of power of the First Group, which became the CHP after 1923, through the disestablishment of religion and by constraining factions within the ruling elite, including the ulema. Matters such as the abolition of the caliphate reflected the concerns of nationalists regarding not only its transnational links with Islam and becoming an alternative centre of power and opposition, but also a power struggle within the elite, with some seeing the caliph as the only counterweight to the growing dominance of Mustafa Kemal (Deringil Reference Deringil1993b: 177; Earle Reference Earle1925; Zürcher Reference Zürcher2004: 166–167).Footnote ¹³

Similarly, during the 1924 constitutional debates, drafters were more concerned about resisting the expansion of Mustafa Kemal’s presidential powers than the future of religious institutions. Such divisions, as well as strategic, and to some extent ideological, differences, resulted in the establishment in late 1924 of the Progressive Republican Party (Terakkiperver Cumhuriyet Fırkası). This experiment was to prove short-lived, and increasingly in the second half of the 1920s, the distribution of power within the government had shifted, resulting in the ascendancy of a more anti-clerical and positivist faction of the ruling coalition.

A visible sign of this struggle was the reduction in MPs drawn from the ulema or educated in religious schools, while those with a military background increased. In the second parliamentary period, the number of ulema in the national assembly dropped to 4.2 per cent of the total from 18 per cent prior to the 1923 elections, whereas the number of soldiers rose to 19.8 per cent from 13 per cent (Demirel: Reference Demirel2010: 328). Similarly, the number of lawmakers with religious education dropped from 24.5 per cent in the 1920–1923 parliament to 3.3 per cent in 1943–1946 (327). Yet despite the domination of government by the ‘Kemalist’ faction since the late 1920s, this had not meant that the state was completely overtaken. Conservatives, Islamists and the ulema remained and formed other institutional arms of the state. While subdued during the one-party era, given the suppression of all types of politics, including religious (Islamic and Alevi) practices that the regime feared could pose a threat to the Republic, the balance of power was to shift with the move to multi-partism and contingent events. The fate of the Ottoman ulema, which were absorbed by the Diyanet, and its strategies of struggle and compromise with other factions of the state will be examined in more detail in Chapters 2 and 3.

The project of secularism was not only an ideological project by positivist or military-bureaucratic Kemalist elites. It also heralded the construction and ascendancy of a Muslim majority from the perspective of nation-state builders. Debate about the nature of the relationship between religion and state, including the question of the extent to which Western constitutionalism was in line with the Islamic tradition, and indeed many of the reforms of the early Republic, were certainly not novel and can be dated to the late Empire. One of the first explicit references to and defences of the principle of laicism is traced to Ali Suavi (Bozkurt Reference Bozkurt2010: 54), a Muslim intellectual (and an early Islamist or Turkist, according to some accounts) who was a prominent member of the Young Ottomans (Yeni Osmanlılar), established in 1865 in reaction to Tanzimat reforms and to push for constitutional government based on Islamic principles (Hanioğlu Reference Hanioğlu2010: 103; Karpat Reference Karpat1972: 262–270; Zürcher Reference Zürcher2010: 68). The edict of the Tanzimat had initiated debate about the adoption of a civil code, pitting different factions of the Ottoman bureaucracy against each other, with one side arguing for the French Civil Code to provide equality between Muslims and non-Muslims, and the other arguing that the Ottoman Civil Code should be compatible with Islamic law (Bozkurt Reference Bozkurt1998: 292–293). This matter was finalised in the Republic with the adoption of the Swiss Civil Code. With the ascendancy of the positivist and Westernist-oriented ITC during the second constitutional period, the matter of laicism and women’s rights were also increasingly being debated in the public realm (Bozkurt Reference Bozkurt2010: 95–96). These debates, which had particularly intensified during the Tanzimat period and led to the increasing push by Ottoman intellectuals and bureaucrats for the adoption of Western legal codes, related not just to the diffusion of European and Enlightenment ideas, however. They were crucially linked to concerns about ensuring the unity of the Empire following nationalist agitation among non-Muslims and imperial penetration, which had also been a key trigger to the modernisation drive of the Ottoman state. Secularism was thereby discussed within the context of debates about how to prevent imperial penetration on behalf of the various non-Muslim communities that enjoyed privileges and protection from Western powers.

In the late Ottoman Empire, the debate about the secularisation of the legal framework had not only emerged as a result of the engagement with and penetration of positivist and Westernist ideas but was also fundamentally tied to the national question. Both for the Ottoman authorities and for the founders of the Republic, the status of non-Muslims was used as a pretext for imperial penetration and undermined state sovereignty, as experienced under the capitulations regime. Therefore, in the early Republic, laicism also came to be perceived as essential to eliminating the privileges of non-Muslims. Following the War of Independence and during the Lausanne Convention in 1922 to 1923, the status of non-Muslims and capitulations had emerged as a key sticking point among the imperial powers and the representatives of the nascent Turkish Republic. For the republican elites, the lifting of the capitulations regime could be secured and further future intervention on behalf of non-Muslims prevented if the equality of non-Muslims could be granted under secular laws. Consequently, the promise of the adoption of a secular civil code was given during the Lausanne negotiations in order to avoid the continuation of privileges for non-Muslims on the basis that they were not protected under shari’a, which was still in force at the time (Aktar Reference Aktar2000: 109–110; Akyol Reference Akyol1998; Bozkurt Reference Bozkurt2010). Similarly, Aktar (Reference Aktar and Duft2009: 37) also argues that the enactment of the civil code was not ‘just “a step leading to the level of contemporary civilization,” since this law provided the Kemalists also with the magic key that let them not just be in power, but also made them capable of exerting unlimited power over the citizens of the Turkish State’.Footnote ¹⁴ The capitulations regime was thereby officially abolished by the Lausanne Treaty, having been abrogated by the ITC with the outbreak of the First World War. These considerations were reflected in the debates about the adoption of a secular civil code in 1926, when constitutional drafters reasoned that its adoption was necessary for ‘national sovereignty […] because if laws are based on religion, a state that accepts freedom of conscience will have to enact different laws for different groups of subjects, and such a state of affairs is completely discordant with the political, social, and national unity required by contemporary states’ (Aktar Reference Aktar and Duft2009: 37; Bozkurt Reference Bozkurt2010: 193).

The stipulations of the Lausanne Treaty had also acted as a constraint on definitions of the Turkish nation and citizenship during the drafting of the 1924 Constitution. In fact, this had parallels with the circumstances preceding the introduction of a more inclusive definition of the Ottoman subject during the Tanzimat era and the granting of equality to non-Muslims, which were partly an outcome of external pressures. While the 1921 Constitution had introduced the concept of national sovereignty, the 1924 version established the concept of the Turkish nation. Compared with its complete absence from the 1921 Constitution, there are nineteen references to ‘Turk’, ‘Turkish’ and ‘Turkishness’ in the 1924 Constitution, alongside a significant focus by lawmakers on the need to ‘Turkify’ the language of the constitution away from Arabic. Together with the Turkification of the constitution, there had also been the continued Turkification of place names to make them in line with Islam and Turkishness, a move traced to ITC policies in the Ottoman Empire (Bayır Reference Bayır2016: 105–106; Üngör Reference Üngör2012: 240–245).Footnote ¹⁵ Yet, together with this emphasis on Turkishness, religion remained a clear marker of what comprised a Turk, and being Sunni Muslim continued to be a constitutive element of national identity.

Crucially, during the 1924 debates, nationalising constitutional framers had clearly differentiated between what constituted the nation and citizenship, a demarcation that was largely based on religion. The initial proposal for the article on Turkish citizenship had treated it as congruous with nationality: ‘all people in Turkey without distinction of race and religion are Turks’. This was chiefly based on the Ottoman constitution of 1876 (and the Ottoman Nationality Law of 1869), which had declared that ‘all subjects of the empire are called Ottomans, without distinction whatever faith they profess’ (Article 8). Nationality was to be achieved, therefore, on the grounds of either jus soli (right of soil, including those born in the specified territory) or jus sanguinis (right of blood, including children of subjects/nationals). However, such a formulation was objected to by lawmakers in 1924 as they argued that there should be a distinction between a Turkish national and a citizen of Turkey. In a telling exposition on Turkish national identity, a Constitutional Commission reporter declared during constitutional debates that:

While the reporter’s words were met with noises from the chamber of Turkey, it was not possible to adopt a more exclusivist definition of Turkish citizenship. The Constitutional Commission reporter warned that this was restricted by the terms of the Lausanne Treaty.Footnote ¹⁶ Following further discussion about how to restrict the definition of Turk without contravening the Lausanne Treaty, Article 88 was revised in a manner that sidestepped the issue of defining the substance of a Turkish nation: ‘All people in Turkey without distinction of race and religion are Turkish citizens [my emphasis]’. Consequently, despite the adoption of a putatively inclusive concept of citizenship, for the constitutional framers, religion remained a clear marker of what comprised a Turk, as demonstrated by their resistance to including non-Muslims as nationals. Equally, this reveals how nation building involves a process of minoritisation or the emergence of ‘minorities’ – including Kurds, Alevis, Armenians, Jews and Christians – who become stigmatised and marginalised as falling outside of the (constructed) majority.

This distinction made by nation-state builders was reflected in different practices of the state, such as refugee and immigration policies, which were biased in favour of Muslims with Turkish descent and of Sunni Hanefi background (Kirişci Reference Kirişci2000: 4) as well as economic policies. To ensure the monopolisation of the economy by the Muslim Turkish majority, the Republic continued the Turkification, or rather, Muslimisation, efforts of the ITC adopted from 1908 to 1922. Examples of these policies include the displacement of the Jewish population with the Thrace Incident in 1934; the discriminatory Wealth Tax of 1942–1944; the adoption in 1932 of Law No. 2007 reserving certain professions only for Turkish citizens; and the Turkish language campaigns from 1937. Businesses were instructed by the central government to replace non-Muslim workers with Muslim Turks during the early Republic. Bracketing the question of Alevi identity (see Chapter 3), estimated to comprise some 15 to 20 per cent of the population according to official censuses that categorise Alevis as Muslims, by 1927, the Republic’s first census showed that the non-Muslim share of the population had declined to just 2.64 per cent from 20 per cent in 1912 (over the same territory) (Çağaptay Reference Çağaptay2002; Koraltürk Reference Koraltürk2011: 26–27). Following the 5–6 September 1955 attacks against minorities involving the violent appropriation of their wealth, non-Muslims had fallen to less than 1 per cent of the population. Thus, contrary to analyses of Turkish nationalism that differentiate between its ethnic and civic (territorially defined and inclusive) forms (e.g. Bora Reference Bora2003a: 437; Parla and Davison Reference Parla and Davison2004: 68–69), Islam remained the defining marker of identity, alongside language. Aktürk (Reference Aktürk2009: 906) has, in this vein, underscored the ‘continuity between the Islamic millet as an Ottoman legacy and the formulation of Turkish nationhood’.

The 1961 Constitution

Compared with nationalising constitution making in the 1920s, the 1961 document was prepared after the struggle within the state had culminated and was – temporarily – subdued by a military coup. The balance of power within the state had begun to shift towards rightist traditionalist-conservative Islamist factions, especially by the 1940s, as the one-party regime came under growing internal and external pressure. At the seventh congress of the CHP held in 1947, the split between the different factions became especially apparent in the debate about laicism, with one side arguing for the reform of religion by the government and the other that it should be left to the ulema (Tunaya Reference Tunaya2007: 171–175). According to Çetinsaya (Reference Çetinsaya1999: 366–367), the traditionalist-conservatives developed ‘four philosophical and political lines during this time: anti-collectivism/societalism; cultural nationalism; modernist Islam; and anti-positivist modernism’, which overlapped on some levels with Islamism. This faction within the state had argued during 1947 that religion was important both for public morality and as a bulwark against communism. Based on this, they called for the expansion of religious education and the Diyanet, arguing that the latter should either be made autonomous or be given greater resources. However, another more radical faction disputed the role of religion as an antidote to communism, arguing that the survival of the Turkish nation depended not on religion but on the Turkish race. Instead, they saw the expansion of religious infrastructure as compromising laicism.

Together with intra-regime struggles, of equal importance was the impact of increasing class differentiation, the prominence of a domestic bourgeoisie cultivated by the state and, externally, the emergence of the Cold War in the aftermath of the Second World War. The transition to multi-partism in 1946 therefore addressed both intensifying intra-elite divisions and growing discontent at home and was also viewed by the regime as a means of extracting political and economic support from Western powers, including protection from Soviet demands. Meanwhile, from the perspective of Western powers, Turkey was emerging as a critical element of anti-communist strategies and the encirclement of the Soviet Bloc (Angrist Reference Angrist2004: 239; Zürcher Reference Zürcher2004: 208–209), which was marked by its inclusion in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1952. These contingent events were to have a lasting impact on the balance of power between different elements of the Turkish state, empowering more rightist, traditionalist-conservative Islamist elements and policies. For one, the Cold War related anti-communism drive from the late 1940s was important for the expansion of religious infrastructure, including religious education and the role of the Diyanet, along with creation of anti-communist associations by state actors in cooperation with Islamist and rightist actors such as the Association for Fighting Communism (Komünizmle Mücadele Derneği, KMD). In 1949, the CHP had even appointed as prime minister (1949–1950) Şemsettin Günaltay, an Islamist who was a frequent writer for Islamist journals such as Sebilürreşad, which was also closely associated with the senior ulema within the Diyanet.Footnote ¹⁷

The Democrat Party (Demokrat Partisi, DP), established by former members of the CHP, ascended to power in 1950 and became the dominant party of the decade. It had employed a combination of populist appeals, politics and patronage to build its support, appealing particularly to the peasantry in a still largely agrarian society of small producers (Sunar Reference Sunar and Sunar2004: 124–128). Initially, the party had continued the loosening of restrictions on political life and religious activity that the CHP had initiated in the late 1940s, but it had become increasingly authoritarian towards the end of the decade as economic crisis and mismanagement precipitated a declining vote share. The drift towards authoritarianism was facilitated by the highly majoritarian political system (in Lijphart’s sense; see Chapter 6) established by the 1924 Constitution, which reflected the majoritising and nationalising concerns of state builders. In this vein, the Turkish system comprised a highly centralised government with no checks and balances in the form of a separation of powers constraining the sovereignty of the parliamentary majority and, thereby, the concentration of power in the executive. The subsequent transition to multi-party politics in 1946 was achieved with only small changes in the media, electoral and association laws and without an overhaul of the unconstrained majoritarian political system (Özbudun Reference Özbudun2000: 53).

Together with this, the growing socio-economic crisis and political contestation in the 1950s formed the backdrop to a military takeover in 1960, which resulted in the closure of the DP. The 1961 Constitution was prepared under the auspices of the military – which was itself deeply divided and comprised various competing factions (Jacoby Reference Jacoby2003: 674; Ulus Reference Ulus2010: 15) – and drafted by a Constituent Assembly composed of the National Unity Committee (Milli Birlik Komitesi, MBK), comprising the military junta leaders and the partially indirectly elected Assembly of Representatives, which was largely dominated by the CHP or its sympathisers, with no representation of the DP.Footnote ¹⁸ A key concern of constitutional framers in the Constituent Assembly was the moderation of the unrestrained majoritarianism of the political system founded by the 1924 Constitution, which also partly underpinned the DP’s increasing authoritarianism, through the introduction of separation of powers, judicial review, a proportional representation (PR) electoral system and a bicameral parliament (Tanör Reference Tanör1995: 309–313). However, together with the constitutional framers’ efforts to impose checks and balances against majoritarian government, the military was also moved to position itself as a tutelary actor, an alternative power centre to civilian government, through the establishment of the National Security Council (Milli Güvenlik Kurulu, MGK) as a constitutional body in 1961.

The draft constitutional proposal in 1961 defended the principle of laicism in similar terms as when it was first adopted in 1937, stating that ‘the Turkish Republic is laic; it rejects the interference of religion in state matters and the influence of irrational sources on law. Without doubt this does not mean that religion is denied but that religion is left to individuals’ consciences.’ Yet, constitutional drafters in 1961 were also concerned with clarifying what this involved in practice, and compared with 1937, there was a plurality of approaches. Despite the military’s involvement and the lack of a (democratic) representative element during the constitution making, however, there was active debate on different political sides and, significantly, in contrast with other periods of constitution making, inclusion of non-Muslim representatives. Several drafters argued that laicism meant a separation of religion from state matters, objecting to the role of the Diyanet within the state apparatus, while others focused on the principle of freedom of conscience and worship, positing that the state should give equal treatment to or be neutral in the provision of religious services for both the majority and the minority. In this manner, Hikmet Kümbetlioğlu, a representative of the judiciary in the Constituent Assembly, opined that it was contrary to laicism to make other religions and denominations fund the Diyanet through taxes, which represented only one denomination of one religion (Islam): ‘In this country where 99% of the population are Muslim, there has to be the same respect for the beliefs of the members of the 1%’ (Öztürk Reference Öztürk1966a: 721). From this standpoint, it appeared that elements of the 1961 Constituent Assembly regarded laicism as involving ‘private’ religiosity alongside the restriction of religious authority to ensure ‘public’ secularity. Conversely, some members argued that the nature of the Turkish nation required the state to support religious affairs and revitalise religion. At the same time, Assembly members were keen to emphasise that laicism should not be understood as irreligiosity or as being an enemy of religion, thereby responding to the criticisms, particularly from conservative circles, of reforms and restrictions on religious activity adopted during the one-party period.

What emerged in the final document was a compromise between these diverging currents. Alongside objections to the Diyanet’s role within a laic state, one group of constitutional framers also protested about the inclusion of a clause on the state provision of religious education (in Article 19). Two dissenters among the ten members of the original İstanbul University Committee that had prepared the first draft of the constitution argued that the provision of such services, even if to the majority religious group, was contrary to laicism and democracy. It is also clear that the 1961 constitution making involved an anti-majoritarian (but not necessarily pluralistic) impulse, as framers were keen to prevent the accumulation of power allowed by the 1924 Constitution through the introduction of checks and balances. Consequently, despite the fact that an overwhelming majority appeared to support state intervention in religion, the clause was removed from the final draft, and religious education was left to individual choice. The other tendency was related to concerns that if religion was not kept under state control then it would either take over the state or organise itself outside the state. According to some constitutional framers, therefore, this made Turkey a unique case in contrast to the West. They were equally afraid of the exploitation of religious sentiment by political actors to bolster their power, which was the accusation faced by the DP government in the 1950s.

Elements of the junta regime were motivated by similar thinking, and at that point, exerted their influence on the side of this group. Consequently, in the 1961 Constitution, the Diyanet was incorporated as a constitutional body for the first time on the directives of the military (the implications of this are further discussed in Chapters 2 and 3), having not been previously mentioned in the constitution or the proposals prepared by the designated academic commissions. On the one hand, this meant that the constitution essentially (re)constructed laicism by linking it explicitly with the majority religion through the inclusion of the Diyanet in the constitutional order. On the other hand, as the following chapters will show, this association did not simply involve control of religion by the state since the relationship between religion and state was not a one-way relationship; in turn, the religious authority – the Diyanet – was also able to expand its power and domain of action.

While the nature of laicism came under greater scrutiny following the transition to multi-partism, a key aspect of continuity with previous periods of constitution making was the enduring concern with the Muslim Turkish majority during 1961. Many constitutional framers were more concerned about expanding the religious freedom of the Muslim majority, which they commonly referred to as comprising between 90 and 99.5 per cent, and as ‘our religion’, than about ensuring equal protection of rights and freedoms for minorities.Footnote ¹⁹ They argued, therefore, that religious freedom required the ability to organise and carry out religious education (whereas the constitution guaranteed only belief and worship). Religious education was supported and justified by most members who spoke based on the Muslim majority, the so-called 90 to 99 per cent Muslim character of the Turkish nation, alongside what they believed to be a need to teach true and correct religion to enlighten the population. Somewhat telling with regard to a continued suspicion of non-Muslims are the comments by Constitutional Commission speaker Muammer Aksoy,Footnote ²⁰ who, in responding to the protests regarding the unequal treatment of minorities, rejected the existence of discrimination, referring to ‘mistakes in implementation’ and ‘precautionary measures’ against minorities owing to ‘painful’ past experiences impacted by ‘external players’ (Öztürk Reference Öztürk1966b: 1263–1264).

Nevertheless, despite this consensus and concern with the ‘Muslim majority’, one of the longest debates among constitution framers was about the nature of Turkish nation identity and nationalism.Footnote ²¹ In general, there was consensus on the definition of Turkish nationalism as not being racist (or inspired by Turanism) or pan-Islamist (ümmetçilik, the unity of the Islamic community, or ummah). The aim was, rather, to distinguish between Turkish Islam and transnational pan-Islamism. Consequently, framers underlined the failure of pan-Islamism and Ottomanism to save the Ottoman Empire. A pertinent example is the words of Şemsettin Günaltay:

Nationalist Abdülhadi Toplu stated similarly that

Yet, contrary to other periods of constitution making, there were currents that emphasised Turkishness as distinct from Islam. For instance, Cemal Gürsel, the head of the MBK, argued that ‘Islamism is the biggest element that ruined our nationalism. The Islamic creed made us forget our nationalism, due to ignorance our nation couldn’t have a Turkish spirit’ (Öztürk Reference Öztürk1966b: 1086–1087). He went on to add that if a citizen in Anatolia is asked what they are, they will first say they are Muslim, not a Turk (Öztürk Reference Öztürk1966b: 1079–1080). Other members of the assembly, such as Kasım Gülek (former CHP general secretary between 1950 and 1959), emphasised Turkish national identity in apparently more inclusive language:

The 1982 Constitution and Augmentation of Religious Majoritarianism

The 1961 Constitution failed to deliver political stability to Turkey, however. Not unlike developments elsewhere in the world, the country witnessed an intense polarisation between leftist and rightist politics, which became increasingly violent in the lead-up to the 1980 coup. On 12 March 1971, the military intervened, issuing an ultimatum that outlined the need for the political authorities to address ‘anarchy’ in the country. Yet the 1971 coup was also a product of the intensifying divisions within the military as exemplified by the failed coup plot by a leftist faction prior to 12 March (Hale Reference Hale1994: 186; Ulus Reference Ulus2010; 52–63). While the struggle within the military itself intensified, catalysing an ongoing purge of leftist currents, the successive coalition governments were unable to reverse the tide on the civilian side as the executive and legislative body became increasingly paralysed, partly as a result of polarisation and in-fighting. Political violence continued to build while taking on sectarian undertones, with massacres of Alevi citizens in Maraş in 1978 and in Çorum in 1980 alongside the assassination of prominent political actors. Meanwhile, the import substitution strategy had begun to falter, particularly after the 1973 to 1974 oil shocks, and Turkey was becoming increasingly engulfed by a growing economic crisis.

On the other hand, Cold War anti-communism policies continued to have an impact on Turkish political life. Since the 1960s, Saudi Arabia, supported by the United States, had been using Islam as a means to counter Arab nationalism and leftists (Ahmad Reference Ahmad1988: 761). Following the 1973 to 1974 oil embargo, the prominence and influence of the conservative Arab monarchies were further raised. In turn, the growing wealth of these monarchies enabled increased funding for religious and Islamist actors and organisations in Turkey through bodies such as the Saudi-based Muslim World League (Rabita al-Alam al-Islami, Rabita). Within this context, Turkey emerged as a critical actor that was ‘considered to be at the heart of a[n Islamic] “green belt” fighting against the “red belt” of communism’ (Ergil Reference Ergil2000: 54–55).Footnote ²² Such geopolitical developments, together with domestic factors in Turkey, played a role in creating new opportunity structures for conservative and Islamist actors, particularly during the rightist Islamist National Front coalition governments of the 1970s.

The 1982 Constitution emerged within this milieu following the 12 September 1980 military intervention, which has commonly been regarded as a turning point in the history of the Republic concerning the state’s relationship with religion (Atasoy Reference Atasoy2009: 95; Çarkoğlu and Kalaycıoğlu Reference Çakmak2009: 10; Eligür Reference Eligür2010; Sakallıoğlu Reference Sakallıoğlu1996; Toprak Reference Toprak and Wagstaff1990: 10; Tuğal Reference Tuğal2007: 11; Yavuz Reference Yavuz2003). Rather than a radical break or ‘a highly controlled opening to religious groups’ to control and suppress the Islamist movement through its absorption into official ideology, the 1980 intervention underscored the decisive shifting balance of power within the state. Most revealing as to the nature of this was the junta regime’s adoption of what has been designated the TIS, which was an Islamisation programme developed by the Hearth of the Enlightened (Aydınlar Ocağı, AO; see Chapter 5), a small organisation comprising around 150 anti-communist, rightist Islamist-conservative-nationalist intellectuals working closely with state actors, which was in part aimed at stemming intense social contestation and polarisation in the 1970s and ensuring national unity (Can and Bora Reference Can and Bora2004: 150–189; Taşkın Reference Taşkın2007; Toprak Reference Toprak and Wagstaff1990).Footnote ²³ The National Culture Report, prepared in 1983 by the State Planning Organisation (Devlet Planlama Teşkilatı, DPT), including members of the Hearth of the Enlightened, is an exemplary document in terms of the TIS programme, with its vision of reorienting society around ‘the mosque, barracks and the family’, regarded as the three pillars of Turkish national culture that were undermined by Westernisation. Islam was defined by the report as the most important aspect of national culture within the context of a country characterised as 99.8 per cent Muslim. The political crises of the preceding years and ‘regionalism’, identified as a by-product of democratisation, were described as being damaging to national culture and integrity. In this manner, ‘national culture planning’ was embraced as a weapon against ideological movements. A comprehensive strategy of cultural engineering was proposed, including the creation of a ‘model human’ and a pious (dindar) Turkish nation through the expansion of religious education (including compulsory lessons) in schools, hospitals, prisons and workers’ associations, as well as the promotion of Islam by the Diyanet (e.g. by teaching families how to provide religious education to their children) and the state public broadcasting organisations (DPT 1983). This Islamisation programme also targeted Alevis, which faced rejuvenated efforts at systematic faith-based assimilation that included forcing Alevi children to attend Sunni religious schools (Kenanoğlu 11 April Reference Kenanoğlu2013; Radikal 26 October 2012) (see Chapter 3).

The TIS doctrine also defines the spirit of the 1982 Constitution, promulgated during the period of direct military rule (1980–1983), which was at heart a nationalising programme that paralleled the majoritising constitution making of the 1920s. Indeed, Yavuz (Reference Yavuz2003: 77) notes that the Constitutional Preparation Committee comprised two members of the Hearth of the Enlightened. The bicameral Constituent Assembly, which prepared the constitution, in comparison with that of 1961, was considerably less pluralistic, as evidenced by both the limited debate and the lack of minority representatives.Footnote ²⁴ Reflecting this, the 1982 Constitution clearly steered the political system back towards the unconstrained majoritarianism of the one-party period by further eroding the checks and balances introduced by the 1961 Constitution, which had also been tapered following the 1971 coup. This included strengthening the executive branch at the expense of parliament, introducing a 10 per cent national electoral threshold to facilitate one-party government and further curtailing the powers of the Constitutional Court. With respect to religion, the article on laicism was untouched, while its irrevocability was introduced for the first time, together with an expressive preamble, which declared that ‘laicism requires that sacred religious feelings should never interfere in state matters and politics’. More in keeping with the 1920s, however, laicism became more explicitly linked to the majority religion as framers conceptualised the article as involving a natural partiality towards the Muslim majority Turkish nation. As one member of the Constituent Assembly stated,

Drafters emphasised that laicism did not mean ‘irreligiosity’ (‘dinsizlik’, to be without religion) or being an infidel (gavur) but, instead, the protection of religion through the Diyanet.Footnote ²⁵

More significantly, it was the expansion of the Diyanet’s role outlined in the constitution (examined in Chapter 2) and the introduction of compulsory religious education – essentially the propagation of Sunni Islam – as part of the article on the freedom of religion and conscience that clearly privileged Muslim Turkish identity.Footnote ²⁶ Compulsory religious education was one of the most debated items by the MGK and the Consultative Assembly, even though the outcome had already been determined: the leader of the 1980 junta regime, General Kenan Evren, had announced its introduction in 1981. Accordingly, just two objections were raised during the debates. In 1982, as in 1961, constitutional framers were concerned about teaching ‘correct religion’, and they saw religious education as a means of preventing the exploitation of religion or the influence of reactionary forces. However, in 1982, religious education was also conceptualised and highlighted as being essential for the attainment of national unity and solidarity, providing an antidote or ‘national cement’ against anarchy, communism, reaction and nationally divisive currents.Footnote ²⁷ A common sentiment voiced was the desire to raise an anti-materialist faithful (imanlı) generation (Recai Dinçer in DM 12 August 1982: 478). As one member stated, ‘Let’s remember what preceded 12 September. It came about because of irreligiosity in high schools and universities, which underpins anarchy’ (Î. Doğan Gürbüz in DM 1 September 1982: 299).

The elevation of and focus on a Muslim Turkish majority as the base of the nation-state was naturally reflected in the reconfiguration of national identity, which was more in keeping with the early periods of constitution making. The drafters envisaged an explicit synthesis of Turkishness and Islam. As one member of the Consultative Assembly pointed out,

Based on their conception of the nation as ‘90 per cent’/‘95 per cent’/‘99 per cent’ majority Muslim, the framers voiced concern chiefly for the freedom of the Sunni Muslim Turkish majority and its needs and were less interested in neutrality or the protection of minorities. This sentiment was pithily summarised by the declaration of one member of the assembly, who said that ‘the vast majority of the Turkish nation is Muslim. Given this, it is required that the Islamic religion should be the focal point of [the laws pertaining to] freedom of religion and conscience’ (DM 1 September 1982: 273). Based on similar reasoning, many framers objected to Article 24 on grounds of religious freedom, arguing that it gave too much protection to non-believers, with one member stating that the article ‘gives the impression as if this has not been prepared for the Turkish nation which is 99.14 per cent Muslim’ (Mehmet Pamak in DM 10 August 1982: 294).

And, again, like the earlier periods of constitution making, but in contrast to 1961, there was a significantly more hostile and exclusionary approach towards minorities in 1982. Any expression of ‘denominational differences’ (an implicit reference to Alevis) was considered to be grounds for the Constitutional Commission to impose restrictions on religious freedom. Meanwhile, a reference to the educational rights of minorities, or even use of the word ‘minority’,Footnote ²⁸ was rejected by the assembly, with minorities being merely tolerated, at best: ‘We will not force anyone towards our [my emphasis] religion’ (DM 1 September 1982: 283). In sum, the approach of the 1982 constitutional drafters towards religious freedom can be summarised in the sentence of one member: ‘Thank God, we live in a country that is 99.9 per cent Muslim’ (Mustafa Alpdündar in DM 1 September 1982: 295).

The re-emphasis on the synthesis between Islam and Turkishness in 1961, and more so in 1983, was just as much a reflection of the fear of the transnationalism of religion. During the 1960s, Islamists in Turkey were coming under the influence of movements in other Muslim majority contexts, such as Egypt, and questioning whether nationalism was an alien ideology (Çetinsaya Reference Çetinsaya1999: 371). For the constitutional framers, therefore, Turkish identity, while being deeply intertwined with Islam, had to be distinguished from the wider ummah, or Islamic community, as much as communism. Such thoughts echoed the debates in the late Ottoman Empire and the concerns of nationalists that pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism (Turanism) were insufficient to secure national unity. This situation was articulated by Mustafa Kemal in Nutuk in 1927 – that pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism had never been successful and that the rational choice suggested by history was the adoption of national politics. A similar attitude can be observed in the official military documents from the 1997 coup unearthed by the parliamentary commission investigating coups in 2012: there, pan-Islamists are seen to be emboldening Kurdish separatism.

Constitution Making in the AKP Era

Efforts to draw up a new civil constitution prepared by elected representatives rather than under military rule were to wait until October 2011. The early years of the AKP had witnessed an increasing struggle between different parts of the state and the government. Elements within the military and Constitutional Court had manoeuvred to prevent the election of the AKP’s representative to the presidency in 2007, while in a highly controversial decision that some saw as overstepping its remit, the top court rejected constitutional amendments to lift restrictions on the headscarf in 2008.Footnote ³⁰ At the same time, the AKP narrowly escaped a party closure case launched by the public prosecutor of the Court of Cassation, based on one vote of the members of the Constitutional Court. The AKP had responded by holding referendums on constitutional amendments in 2007 in which the public voted for a directly elected president, and following September 2010, the judiciary was restructured significantly. However, the AKP did not deem the amendments sufficient to alter the ‘soul’ of the constitution. In October 2011, the government launched a Constitution Reconciliation Commission (Anayasa Uzlaşma Komisyonu, AUK) comprising the four main parties, which was tasked with drawing up a new constitution. The need for a new civil constitution to replace the current version imposed (through a plebiscitary referendum) by the 1982 junta regime had been one of the central calls across the party divide during the 2011 general election. The AKP’s AUK representative and lawmaker, Mustafa Şentop, declared:

As a civil attempt, and owing to the range of actors and political parties of different ideological backgrounds, the 2011 to 2012 constitutional deliberations were some of the most open, diverse and representative in modern Turkish history.Footnote ³¹ At the same time, they revealed a deep level of polarisation. The major political parties held different constitutive visions for the polity, not just on the nature of government (parliamentary vs. presidential, majoritarian vs. consensus models) but also, fundamentally, on national identity and the relationship between religion and state. According to the Peace and Democracy Party (Barış ve Demokrasi Partisi, BDP) representative Altan Tan, Kurds were included in the Muslim majority during the establishment of the Republic but were never given the rights that minorities were granted. The pro-Kurdish BDP and Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) stood at polar ends of the debate about the nature of citizenship and Turkish national identity. For the BDP, the constitution should contain recognition of Kurdish language rights along with what it regarded as a more neutral and inclusive reference to citizens of the Turkish Republic rather that to Turkish citizens, which is seen as an exclusive ethnic identity. This reformulation of citizenship, albeit more narrow, was supported by the AKP, for which Muslim identity was emphasised as the primary identity of Turkish citizens. The CHP, too, was emphatic in its argument that inclusivity was not achieved by forcing Kurds to define themselves as Turks, but the party maintained the reference to ‘Turkish citizen’ in the article. From the MHP’s perspective, however, ‘Turk’ referred not to an ethnic label but to a culture and civilisation that spoke Turkish. The constitution was being written for and addressed to the ‘founding’ Turkish nation within the Turkish Republic, and the recognition of Kurdish identity or ethnic difference could result in the dismantling of Turkey. Accordingly, the MHP insisted on Turkish remaining the language of education, while the BDP sought education in the Kurdish language.

On the principle of laicism, rightist and conservative parties upheld a religious majoritarian logic. The AKP and the MHP argued that laicism should be about ensuring toleration and freedom of belief, while also insisting that it was normal for a state to be partial to, and serve, the majority religion. The CHP did not necessarily reject this stance, supporting the maintenance of the Diyanet, while insisting on the importance of laicism for the protection of citizens and to prevent the interference of religion in state matters. In contrast to the AKP and the MHP, both the CHP and the BDP argued that the state should be equal in its treatment of other religions and sects (mezhep), such as the Alevis. Only the small leftist parties interpreted laicism as state neutrality to all faiths, pushing for the abolition of the Diyanet. Accordingly, both the AKP and the MHP defended compulsory religious education, while the CHP pushed for a more pluralistic and critical teaching of religion.

Equally, the AKP focused on the majoritarian 1921 and 1924 constitutions as points of reference and emphasised unrestricted religious freedom and the sovereignty of the parliamentary majority. Its target was, therefore, the 1961 Constitution, as the party’s head of the Constitutional Commission, Mustafa Şentop, outlined:

This contrasted with the stress placed by the CHP on what it viewed as the fundamental achievements of the Republic, including laicism, republican reforms and checks and balances on parliamentary majorities. As such, the AKP and the CHP in particular were fundamentally divided on the irrevocability (Article 4) of the first three articles of the current 1982 Constitution, which outline (i) the form of the state as a republic (Article 1); (ii) the characteristics of the republic as including ‘Atatürkist nationalism’ and laicism (Article 2) and (iii) the integrity, official language, flag, national anthem and capital of the state (Article 3).

The cross-party efforts to draw up a new constitution between 2011 and 2012, based on a negotiated consensus, subsequently failed. In 2014, Erdoğan was elected president and has continued to progressively amass significant powers relative to the other arms of the state, which has, in turn, equipped him with extensive informal power through his domination of patron–client relationships. With the declaration of a state of emergency (SoE) after the 15 July coup attempt, any remaining checks on presidential power were undermined by executive decrees and unprecedented purges within public institutions, including the judiciary. Following the 16 April 2017 constitutional amendment, Turkey has not only come full circle to its one-party era majoritarianism by ending the separation of powers but also gone beyond it by establishing the grounds for a highly personalised autocratic rule (see Chapter 6).