Conclusion: an Islamic Revival?
In the mid-1980s there was renewed speculation about the possibility of a radical Islamic revival in Turkey. It was claimed that reactionaries, with foreign backing, were in the ascendant.
The boom in religious publications, a more widespread observance of the Muslim month of fasting, new restrictions some councils placed on the sale of alcohol, an increase to some 30,000 a year in the number of Turkish pilgrims to Mecca, the re-emergence of tarikats, and the building of an average of 500 new mosques each year were cited as evidence of such a revival. In early 1987 many secularists were alarmed by open fundamentalist clamour for Turkey to implement the $eriat. They condemned Iranian provocation and deplored Saudi financial support for fundamentalist groups in Turkey.Prominent among those clamouring for an Islamic state was Cemalettin Kaplan, a former Mufti of Adana living in voluntary exile in Germany. He branded Kemalism as ‘rebellion against Allah’, and video cassettes of his fundamentalist sermons circulated in Turkey in their thousands. The situation became sufficiently serious for the President of the Republic to condemn Kaplan in particular and Islamic reactionaries in general, stating that they represented as great a danger as Communism.
Private religious observance by individuals, however, is not discouraged and it is natural that some Turks turn increasingly to Islam for solace amid the hardships they have to suffer in an economically struggling nation that is seeking to modernise and industrialise in order to support its rapidly growing population. But certain open manifestations of faith may provoke major confrontations such as the fierce controversy, renewed in 1987, over whether female students should be allowed to wear Islamic-style headscarves at university. On such matters Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, no doubt anxious to avoid alienating religious voters, took a markedly softer line against the fundamentalists than did President Evren, who was not eligible for re-election.
Secularists’ fears were heightened by reports that Nurcus had infiltrated military schools and fundamentalists were plotting to win over the armed forces. Everyone regarded the armed forces as the ultimate bastions of Kemalism; no fundamentalist design could succeed in the face of their determined opposition. As Ataturk had decreed that Islam should not determine the policies or conduct of the state, and as Turkish military leaders have been taught since their schooldays to cherish Ataturk’s reforms, the armed forces are unlikely to remain passive if faced with a serious risk that Turkey might be turned into a religious state. So the actual extent of any Islamic revival in Turkey is likely to remain limited.
The example of Iran is not one that many Turks feel inclined to follow. Even when in 1987 secularists were surprised and alarmed to rediscover the intensity of Islamic fundamentalist attachment manifest in Turkey, opinion polls indicated that at least 80 per cent of the population had no desire to see the $eriat implemented. And that is a measure of the change Ataturk brought about.