Same context, different political paths: Two Islamic movements in Turkey

Abstract

Two Islamic actors in Turkey have transformed the state’s strict control of the religious field (laicism). While the National Outlook Movement, the “mother-movement” of the governing Justice and Development Party, did so through its “participation” in party politics, the Gülen Movement, Turkey’s most powerful Islamic movement that operates hundreds of schools and a major media network, contributed to this transformation through its “non-participation” in party politics as a social movement, providing an alternative to laicist establishments outside of institutional channels. These two movements, by following different political paths, have embodied different opportunities for and challenges to Turkish democratization. To understand their influence in Turkish politics today, this article will adapt a “method of difference” and ask what explains these two Islamic movements’ variation in regards to party politics and what the consequences of this variation are for Turkish politics. Based on qualitative fieldwork in Turkey, this article will argue that both movements have made their decisions about party politics by strategically and differently evaluating the political opportunities/threats of party politics in light of their varying ideological priorities and organizational needs, and that these strategic decisions have transformed the movements themselves and the Turkish regime altering the laicist status quo between them.