By China Tugal
Jadaliyya - May 15 2014
Liberal-conservatism was the dominant intellectual discourse in
Turkey for more than three decades. The 1980s was its moment of
departure. It suffered a hiatus under the shadow of the Kurdish war in
the 1990s, but militaristic brutality also increased its sympathizers.
The 2000s was its golden age. Its triumphalism reached an apex during
the 2010 referendum. Ever since, its dominance has been crumbling.
State versus Society, the Military versus the Civilians, the Authentic Bourgeoisie versus the Old Elite
Among other factors, the 1980 coup convinced many intellectuals that
the military was at the root of Turkey’s problems. Therefore, any
civilian initiative deserved support. This belief was further
strengthened by the global spread of liberal discourses after the defeat
of the 1968 revolutionary wave. “Civil society” became the buzzword in
academia and independent intellectual circles. The new focus on
civilians and civic actors (somehow believed to be brought into
existence without state and military involvement) got an additional
boost from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European
intellectuals’ liberalism.
The rise of the Islamist movement put a new spin on this emergent
discourse. The dominant intellectuals perceived Islamism as a threat,
but also a possibility. It was obviously one of the voices in society
against the state; but it also harbored a lot of authoritarianism. If
the civilian elements within the Islamist movement could be harnessed to
the liberal project, then the resulting combination could turn into a
veritable force against the state. Simultaneously, many intellectuals
within the Islamist movement also started to use the vocabularies of
liberalism, civil society, and, interestingly enough, postmodernism. The
question then became: were these just isolated and unrepresentative
maverick intellectuals, or was there a social force behind them?
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