The main goal of this study is to understand the relationship between Islam and politics by exploring the intellectual foundations of the current Islam-based governmental regime in Turkey, which was established in the last two decades under the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party). The aim is to conduct an interdisciplinary study of what I refer to as the Islamic Intellectual Field (IIF) in Turkey through an examination of Islam-based publications and periodicals that specialize in political thought starting from the 1940s.
Studying this field of intellectual production is significant for at least two reasons. First, even though the issue of Islam has become a key element of politics across the world both in relation to the rise of Islam-based political movements, and to the migration-related expansion of Muslim communities, there is insufficient knowledge on the inner dynamics and features of Islam-based movements, identities, and ideologies, which are shaped by intellectual currents that arise in such Islamic intellectual spheres, and which continue to influence the demands, interests and perspectives of Muslim communities and movements around the world. One reason for this insufficiency is that both mainstream academic work and global media coverage of Islam-related issues tend to treat Islam as a monolithic category, commonly making vast generalizations about Muslims and Islam, often reducing them to some of its extreme and most radical forms, even though these constitute only a marginal place in the diverse array of Islam-based intellectual and political movements. This reductionist approach has produced a heavily biased language in both the academic study and the media coverage of topics related to Islam, which limits and undermines the prospects for informed, impartial and grounded approaches that are necessary for educated public awareness and more effective public policies. The goal of IslamPolTheory is to investigate the intellectual foundations of current Islam-based movements in Turkey by deeply engaging the local intellectual discourse of the IIF and examining it in its own terms, so as to develop a more neutral and informed language with which Islam-based movements and identities can be studied, and more grounded and thorough accounts can be produced. Being such a diverse field that has been established in the 1940s and has exponentially grown after 2002 when the AKP came to power, the IIF in Turkey promises to be an excellent case to gain insights into the intellectual foundations of current Islam-based politics both locally and internationally.
Second, gaining a better understanding of the diversity of the movements in the IIF is significant because this diversity has been crucially instrumental in the electoral success of the ruling AKP that is organically connected to this field. The AKP has systematically relied on building internal alliances and coalitions among different groups and movements in the field, some of which are quite antagonistic to one another. Approaching all Islam-based political groups as part of a monolithic, unified movement lumped under a singular category referred to as “political Islam” that is assumed to have the same set of attributes across the world inevitably makes it impossible to understand the significance of the inner divides, rivalries and oppositions that a political party such as the AKP has maneuvered to secure two decades in power. For this reason, it is essential to examine the IIF as a whole and map out the main alignments and divides so as to gain a better understanding of the diversity of Islam-based political ideologies and movements that constitute the field.
The overall objectives of IslamPolTheory are,
1) Introducing the Islamic intellectual field in Turkey as a vast and diverse field of political theorizing that has fueled different Islam-based political movements since the 1940s;
2) Conducting a “thick description” of this field to develop the conceptual tools with which it can be studied in its own terms;
3) Studying the main intellectual-political movements in the field to develop a conceptual map with which to understand the political stances of the movements in relation to each other and determine the spectrum of alignments and camps;
4) Exploring the origins of the Islamic intellectual field by focusing on the pioneers of Islamic decoloniality from the early Cold War period.
