The Diffusion of Malcolm X as a Political Symbol Among Turkish Islamists and the Rise of the AK Party, 1999-2019

Abstract

The Diffusion of Malcolm X as a Political Symbol Among Turkish Islamists and the Rise of the AK Party, 1999-2019 Jeffrey Bishku-Aykul (bio) "A pro-government columnist, Hilal Kaplan, a Bogazici graduate who wears a hijab, compared religious conservatives' struggle to that of Malcolm X and Black Americans and warned in an opinion piece that the 'privileged' secularists who ruled the country for decades would fight back."1 1. Introduction In early 2021, protests broke out at Boğaziçi University, where President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had recently appointed an unpopular rector, pitting the state against a more socially liberal student body and faculty. The subsequent fallout became a flashpoint of controversy in national politics, spilling far beyond the confines of campus life and into the pages of The New York Times. To casual readers of this coverage, the above comparison of Turkish religious conservatives to Malcolm X (1925-1965) may have seemed [End Page 65] arbitrary. This article suggests, however, that it aligns with a decades-long tradition of Turkish Islamists employing Malcolm X's image and words in service of their political aims. There are some likely reasons for Turkish Islamist affinity to Malcolm X. As a U.S.-born convert to Islam well before 9/11, the War on Terror, and immigration liberalization, the activist was once one of most public Muslim faces in America. He presented Islam as a solution to American racism, internationalizing the Black American struggle through his travels and speeches. His travels linked Harlem to Cairo, and Mecca to Chicago, forging an ideological bond between Black Americans, the Islamic world, and anti-colonial movements for independence. A legacy of this political activity has been his appeal to Muslims worldwide. However, as the political fortunes of Turkish Islamists have improved, Malcolm X's once subversive image has become a symbol in service of state power. This article provides a theoretical framework for understanding this seemingly contradictory phenomenon. Social movement theory describes the spread of Malcolm X as a symbol, detailing the key role Turkish Islamist columnists play in this process. A subsequent methodological overview and discourse analysis classify references to the Black activist among Turkish Islamist columnists, who 1) assign credibility and significance to his Muslim identity, 2) refer to him to reaffirm negative beliefs about America, and 3) frame his struggles and those of Black Americans as analogous to their own. Finally, this work discusses how Malcolm X has been reinterpreted by contemporary Turkish Islamist newspaper columnists operating during a period of increasingly powerful AK Party (AKP) rule. This study concerns the period April 1999-May 2019, a timeframe that corresponds roughly with the AKP's meteoric rise. In April 1999, two years before the AKP was established, the man who would later become its most prominent figure, Erdoğan, was forced by the state to step down as mayor of Istanbul and serve time in prison for reciting a poem with religious imagery. This key event arguably marked a subversive high point in the career of a politician who would come to be accused of authoritarian tendencies. Two decades later, under Erdoğan, the AKP had achieved such a level of political hegemony that its loss in the 2019 Istanbul race for mayor came as a surprise to many. Accordingly, although it remains to be seen whether future histories will point to this seismic election upset as the beginning of the AKP decline, the period April 1999-May 2019 gives insight into a period of rising political fortunes and the impact this had on Turkish Islamist discourse about Malcolm X. [End Page 66] 2. Theoretical Framework: Turkish Islamist Columnists as a "Channel of Diffusion" Donatella della Porta and Sidney Tarrow define diffusion as "the spread of movement ideas, practices, and frames from one country to another," adding that actors "in one country or region adopt or adapt the organizational forms, collective action frames, or targets of those in other countries or regions."2 Furthermore, Doug McAdam and Dieter Rucht write that diffusion involves an "emitter or transmitter," an "adopter," an "item that is diffused," and a "channel of diffusion that may consist of persons or media that link the...