The Malfunctioning State and Consolidation of the Islamist Social Movement

Abstract

The malfunctioning state – characterized by massive corruption, unequal distribution of wealth, unemployment, and decay in moral values as well as deterioration in law and order – became a political opportunity structure (POS) in the second phase after 1991 of the mobilization of political Islam in Turkey. In the 1990s, the Welfare Party (WP) framed its mobilizational appeal in terms of a “Just Order,” its slogan and critique of the Turkish political and social order, and thereby attracted the support of secular but disaffected voters. This chapter argues that the malfunctioning state, and the grievances it produced, did not by themselves create an Islamist social movement. In the pre-1980 coup period, one consequence of the malfunctioning state was de facto civil war. Yet there was no Islamist mobilization. The Islamist social movement did not arise until movement entrepreneurs seized upon the existing POS and framed a successful mobilizational appeal. It is this dynamic, the role of “agency” in the rise of the Islamist social movement in Turkey, that is the central focus of this chapter. The Just Order fulfilled the three core framing tasks identified by Benford and Snow: it included diagnostic framing, which consists of identifying the problem and attributions; prognostic framing, which consists of the articulation of a solution to the problem; and motivational framing, or a call to collective action.