Islamists on Wire: The View of Islamist Journals Towards Government Policies in Turkey During the 1980s

Abstract

This paper aims to extrapolate the different political stances of Islamist actors with respect to their reciprocal interaction with the ANAP governments in the 1980s in Turkey. Based on a selection of Islamist publications, this article analyzes the views of prominent traditional Islamic groups such as Erenköy and İskenderpaşa orders and Islamist authors about government policies during the period between 1983-1991 in which the ANAP governed as the single party. The analysis will take place on three subjects that shaped the aforementioned period as well as the entirety of Turkish-Ottoman modernization. The subject of economy reveals that Islamists benefitted from neoliberal policies while taking a critical position towards it. In terms of culture, as the second subject, Islamists criticized the ANAP governments for encouraging individualist-hedonistic tendencies and invited them to Islamize the realms of education and culture. The subject of international relations, on the other hand, was dominated by Turkey’s possible accession to the European Community (EC) on which various Islamist groups tried to have an impact by steering the ANAP’s foreign policies.