Philosophical Foundations of Enlightenment, Secularism and the Founding Philosophy of the Republic of Türkiye

Kant's article "What is Enlightenment?" dates back to 1784. It was commissioned for an encyclopedia. It is considered the beginning of the theory of modernity.

“Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere aude! [1] (dare to know). Have courage to use your own understanding! That is the motto of enlightenment .”

Luther said that people do not need a mediator to read the holy book. The holy book is a text that can be understood by the human mind. Luther translates the Bible from Latin to German and breaks new ground.

Kant and Luther's attempt to explain the world with the knowledge of the world and to create a social and mental entity that would explain it is secularism in the philosophical sense. The period between 1830-1848 is the period when positivist thought spread. Positivist thought is based on the idea that societies are progressive. The transition from a society based on religion to a secular society is an evolution. The creation of a civil religion is a necessity for social progress and the emergence of this social model.

Behind the idea that led to the formation of secularism in Turkey is Auguste Comte, one of the representatives of positivist thought. Auguste Comte was greatly influenced by Darwin's work "On the Origin of Species (1859). According to Darwin, nature transformed (evolved) from single-celled creatures to create complex creatures. In other words, there is a development in nature.

Hegel and Marx were also influenced by Darwin. Marx wrote to Darwin asking, “May I dedicate Capital to you?” However, Darwin declined the offer because he thought Marx’s complicated life would cause problems of its own.

The period in which the understanding of “vulgar materialism” dominated in the West coincided with Marx’s time. In other words, scientific knowledge is fundamental and no source of knowledge other than positive knowledge can be accepted to explain the world.

In Turkey, a will to change was manifested in the Gülhane Imperial Edict in 1839. The break with the past first began with the import of technology during the reign of Mahmud II. The aim was to strengthen the military.

The second rupture occurred during the reign of Abdulhamid II. The reign of Abdulhamid II was a period in which important steps were taken for modernization. During that period, engineering schools were opened, military medical schools and teacher training schools began. The development and modernization of the provinces also coincided with this period, which was also the beginning of Anatolian modernization. This process was followed by railways and post-telegraph administration. Thus, “vulgar materialism” began to enter Anatolia in some way. Especially with the contributions of writers such as Beşir Fuat, positivist thought became almost a religion.

The third break is the most radical and is the Republic. The Republic adopted the enlightenment thought (enlightenment despotism) and positivist thought encompassed by the French Revolution in every way. [2]

The Dominance of the French-Style Secularism in the Foundation Phase of the Republic

The Republic tried to create a civil religion. Instead of Anglo-Saxon style secularism, it accepted French secularism with Jacobean characteristics. Turkey's relations with England started very late and were very shallow compared to its relations with France. Here, the concept of the "paradox of modernity" emerges. On the one hand, the Republic tries to create Kant's enlightened person, and on the other hand, it tries to create this individual in a despotic manner by the state. [3]

The creation of an enlightened individual in this way pushes the historical process to the background. In this case, secularism and enlightenment thought only reflect the will of an elitist group, but there is no class in Turkey on which this will can be based. If there is no class that will carry the revolution, the revolution soon becomes a tool to create that class. Since this tool cannot find a class that will support it, it clings to two concepts in order to create this class: bureaucratization and authoritarianism. Behind these concepts are the army, intellectuals and bureaucracy. This is the historical reality of Turkey, and today's approaches such as why there was no democracy at that time or why it was not allowed to exist do not make much sense in this historical process. Because the republican project was born from the ashes of a collapsed empire. In other words, there is a historical turning point that finds itself in the expression "either independence or death", and perhaps the fact that Turkish modernization coincided with such a destruction should be evaluated as a historical misfortune that we will pay the price for in a few centuries.

If we go back to the differences between the understanding of secularism in France and the understanding of secularism in England, we can see that the English liberal-empirical way of thinking and the perspectives of the Scottish Enlightenment on secularism are much softer than French secularism. In addition, liberalism is based on the search for a perfect divine order. However, the positivist thought that French secularism is based on and the understanding of August Comte is that intellectuals are the leaders of society. At this point, it cannot be said that Comte was a philosopher who believed in the people and society.

If the Ottomans had been introduced to the Anglo-Saxon model, they would have incorporated liberal thought and would have built their political regime on liberalism. However, the imperial model in France was, in a sense, a source of inspiration for the Ottoman imperial model. In both structures, a core elite tries to transform society with a dynamic understanding.

The support of the intellectuals for the French Revolution taught the Ottoman intellectuals the truth that a revolution could transform society. (Question: Why did this approach make France one of the leading democracies in the world while leaving Turkey behind?)

Westernization writers and Tanzimat literature played an extremely active role in the intellectual life of the late Ottoman period. For example, the journal İçtihad published by Abdullah Cevdet was one of the most vehement advocates of westernization.

Bureaucratization and authoritarianism brought about the state's control of religion and the rejection of free demands regarding religion. The rise to power of the Democrat Party in 1950 was a kind of rebellion of the people against the Republic. In 1950, the people objected to the Republic being a regime of elites and urbanites.

Is secularism the softest area of the republican project? The views that emerged and spread especially in the 1990s have also led to the spread of the positive answer to this question.

Secularism contains democracy in its essence, and it virtually takes democracy under its wing. Because religion is left directly to the conscience of the individual, and no political movement or political power can impose any belief on society, and the power cannot refer to divine rules in the management of civil life. Therefore, a secular order and democracy created by an enlightened individual based on Kant and Luther - freedom is very important in Kant's definition of enlightenment - are intertwined.

The similarity between the French and Turkish secularism models throughout history has recently become evident in daily political life. The headscarf ban in Turkey and the ban on the use of religious symbols in schools in France demonstrate this similarity. Here, the paradox of modernity emerges.

The enlightened individual, in the sense of Kant's definition, is created by the state, but when the same individual is freed from tutelage and begins to criticize with his own free faculties, the state comes into conflict with itself. (This point needs to be discussed strongly.)

The practices of the Presidency of Religious Affairs in Turkey are the imposition of Sunnism, the religious ideology of the state that has continued since the Ottoman period, on society.

A truly secular practice rejects all religious practices and organizations within the state, including catechism [4]. The main thing is to leave the practice of religion to the congregations. In fact, the practices in the USA are in this direction. However, within the state, devotion to religion is intertwined with nationalism and manifests itself in many practices: singing an anthem and praying before every official meeting, witnesses in court taking an oath by holding a Bible, etc. [5]

When we look at France , we do not see any religious education provided in any school other than fee-based private schools.

Turkey in the 1960s and 1970s

The 1960 coup was the last attempt of the military, bureaucratic and intellectual classes, which we can call the historical bloc in Turkey, to continue the Republic project. Cemal Madanoğlu, a member of the National Unity Committee at the time, called on the universities to prepare a constitution after the coup, and the university accepted this call and showed a concrete example of military-intellectual cooperation by not reacting to the coup.

If we were to characterize the historical bloc as the “center” in the development process of the Republic and the coming to power of the Democrat Party in 1950 as the “coming to power of the periphery,” we can see the 1960 coup as a power struggle of the center against the periphery. Indeed, the coup attempts of February 22 and May 21 were a continuation of the same struggle.

Despite the 1960 coup, the Justice Party regained power against the CHP in 1965 and pushed the center aside. A very important institution that emerged from this power struggle was the State Planning Organization (DPT), which was established immediately after the 1960 coup. This institution was established by the center in order not to transfer power. The DPT is under the control of the government and has undertaken the very important function of regulating the distribution of capital. The DPT now determines how and where value will be created and how it will be distributed.

Süleyman Demirel, who was in power between 1965-1971, undertook the mission of reconciling the state with peasantry and religion. In this sense, Demirel was more to the right than Menderes and tried to eliminate the elements that created crises such as the Democrat Party's unplanned growth strategies and the 1958 devaluation with a more planned growth strategy and did not want Turkey to experience the same experiences again. Indeed, between 1965-1971, Turkey grew by around 7% every year without interruption. Annual inflation was below 10%. In addition, the current period was a growth period for third world countries and Demirel kept a book titled "Limits to Growth" in his hand.

Demirel is trying to glorify the peasantry and the provincial bourgeoisie. On the other hand, he uses religion as a political element in order to express his respect for social values and tries to transform the commercial bourgeoisie into an industrial bourgeoisie with the import substitution economic policies he implements. In the same period, an increase is observed in the number of religious vocational high schools and Quran courses. As a mass party, the Justice Party also adopts populist approaches.

The general political situation until 1970 is as summarized in the previous paragraph. The March 12, 1971 memorandum interrupts these developments. As we come to the 1971 memorandum, the message given by this memorandum is perceived differently by various segments of politics.

From the beginning of the 1960s onwards, Turkey began to be acquainted with leftist movements in the true sense. In the early 1960s, Yön Magazine, which intertwined the left with Kemalism, began to be published. Through Sol Publications, founded by Muzaffer Erdost, some groups were able to directly access the sources that created the leftist ideology.

As the labor minister of the coalition government that came to power in 1961, Bülent Ecevit enacted a new labor law and gave union rights to workers. As a result of all these left-leaning developments, fifteen deputies from the Turkish Labor Party entered the Parliament in 1965. The 1968 movement, whose effects were seen all over the world, contributed to the acceleration of this process, but the fundamental changes actually began to show themselves in the early 1960s.

While all these developments were taking place, some movements started in the army and two factions were formed within the army as Kemalist Right and Kemalist Left. In order to prevent the coup to be carried out by the Left Kemalist faction on March 12 - the date of this coup is March 9 - the army high committee council went into action because the Air Force Commander (Muhsin Batur) changed sides at the last moment, understanding that the movement below could not overcome the power held by the force commanders.

The March 12, 1971 coup was a coup carried out by the army's high command council against the juntas below. March 12 carried out this coup against the March 9 supporters and integrated itself with the values of the historical bloc. March 12 supporters are against the practices of the Justice Party. Another point they oppose or are disturbed by is that leftist movements pose a threat to the values that the center sees as its own. The then Land Forces Commander states that political awareness in Turkey has surpassed social awareness.

The army, which carried out a coup against policies based on religion in 1960, took a stance against both the Justice Party's cultural policies based on the Democrat Party and a new movement defined as left Kemalism in 1971. In other words, the army determined a new stance for itself in 1971 and fulfilled its duty of protecting and preserving the Republic with the truths it believed and thought.

The Justice Party experienced a division within itself before 1971. In 1970, the Demirel Government fell when a segment of the party voted red for the AP budget. This was a countermove by the provincial bourgeoisie against the industrial bourgeoisie that Demirel was trying to develop. This countermove was the first sign of a period in which Islamic politics began to gain strength.

The first legitimate, organized and government level Islamic movement in our recent history is the National Salvation Party. The MSP defends provincial capital against big capital. Therefore, the MSP is against the AP policies that try to integrate big city capital with provincial capital. This situation is also the main element that brought the AKP to power. This formation took shape in 1973 with the MSP entering the Parliament. In order to better understand these approaches of the MSP, let's take a look at the developments in the CHP until 1973.

The CHP began to adopt the concept of the left of center from 1965 onwards. Demirel used the slogan “the left of center, the road to Moscow” in the 1965 elections. Let us remember here that the 1960s were a period when leftist ideas were sprouting in Turkey and were beginning to gain supporters, and the CHP was trying to define itself ideologically for the first time in the political spectrum. In fact, Ecevit also claimed that the 1971 memorandum was made against them in light of these ideological developments in the CHP, and for the first time in 1973, a period began in which the AP represented the center and the CHP gradually fell into the periphery. The CHP was no longer the party of the center, but of the periphery. This CHP came to the point of forming a coalition government with the MSP, another party of the periphery, in 1977.

In 1965, when İsmet İnönü said, “We are a party left of center,” a major transformation began in the CHP, and this was the last real transformation that the CHP experienced. After that date, the CHP has not had any claims of restructuring or transformation. At this point, let’s go back a little further and examine the historical process of the CHP.

CHP's Policies Before 1971

The CHP overcame the economic crisis of 1929 within a few years. The CHP was in a period of expansion (diastolic) until World War II, but entered a period of contraction (cytolic) after 1939. It wanted to enter a period of expansion again with the Farmer Landing Law of 1945. However, this political move did not allow it to become a mass party that looked after the interests of the countryside and the peasantry. The CHP is a party of a modernization that descends from top to bottom, similar to August Comte, and an elitist socio-cultural transformation.

Meanwhile, writers such as Attilla İhan and Niyazi Berkes, in their comparisons of Atatürk and İsmet İnönü, say that if Atatürk had lived after 1938, Turkey would have transitioned to democracy and claim that an intra-party dictatorship was established with İsmet İnönü and that the İsmet İnönü period was actually a counter-revolution. The basis of this view is Atatürk's overwhelming prestige. After all, the War of Independence was won, the Republic was established, and revolutions were made. However, Atatürk never had to lose his position in politics.

If politics is to do politics while preserving one’s own identity despite the ups and downs of politics, İsmet İnönü displayed a stronger political personality than Atatürk within the nature of a historical process specific to Turkey. İsmet İnönü lost his administration that had continued since 1938 overnight in 1950. He was subjected to extraordinary attacks in the parliament. In fact, during an election campaign, he was even forced to say in Uşak, “People of Uşak, was this how you welcomed me in 1922?” and was not allowed into Uşak. [6] He was stoned in Manisa. In Kayseri, a soldier who had received a fire order blocked his way and said to that soldier, “Will you give me the order to fire if I cross that bridge?” and advanced on him. After all of this, he became prime minister again in 1961. All of these are very difficult examples of the political process İsmet İnönü went through for him to digest.

In 1959, the CHP announced the First Goals Declaration and this document formed the basis of the 1961 constitution. The establishment of the Constitutional Court, the introduction of parliamentary immunity, and the establishment of an untamperable electoral system are among the basic recommendations of this document. This effort for renewal brought about some separations within the CHP. Ecevit was at the head of this movement and among those who separated from the CHP were Nihat Erim, who became prime minister after the 1971 memorandum, and finally İsmet İnönü himself. Ecevit liquidated the İnönü wing at a convention and İnönü was forced to resign from the party. In 1973, in light of these developments, the CHP defeated the AP at the ballot box and came to power.

Developments in the 1970s

The DP's coming to power in 1950 and Demirel's AP government in 1965 created a sense of relief in the environment, but in 1969 another party representing the environment was founded: the National Order Party under the leadership of Erbakan.

The party, which started to organize mostly in student dormitories, represented the first emergence of the National Vision and was closed in 1971. The foundations of the AKP were actually laid with the establishment of the National Order Party.

In the early 1970s, Turkey experienced a period in which the AP was active in politics. The AP emerged as a mass party. Behind it are urban capital, peasantry and intermediate social layers that want to move from the commercial bourgeoisie to the industrial bourgeoisie. This mass calls itself conservative and is mostly represented by people who have migrated from the village to the city. There is also populism in this conservatism and it tries to establish a balance between the basic principles of the Republic and the peasantry. It is not in conflict with Kemalist principles and the Kemalist Republic. For this reason, it can also receive votes from voters who support the historical bloc. The representatives of this movement are free boarders who were raised in the institutions of the educational mobilization that began in 1923.

The devshirme system that the Republic adopted from the Ottomans included military schools and free state boarding schools. While the talented ones from poor and underdeveloped families were educated in military schools, the others were educated in free boarding schools. The representatives of the AP governments of the 1970s were made up of segments that came from the free state boarding school system.

The village institutes of the 1940s, until they were closed by the DP in 1952, constituted a model of the state free boarding school system that had not been seen before. The measure of the conservatism of the AP representatives as a mass on the right wing lies in the question of whether the Republic will allow a greater relationship with religion than it currently does. The answer to this question of Demirel, one of the two important representatives of the mass raised in the free boarding school system mentioned above, and Erbakan's are different from each other.

While Demirel's conservatism is essentially a cultural conservatism, Erbakan's conservatism has a political content and demands that Islam be modeled as a decisive meta-political concept of daily life. Therefore, his political struggle is aimed at creating the infrastructure of this political model.

So what is the socio-cultural basis of the movement represented by Erbakan? Since the Ottoman period, religious orders have had an important place in the Anatolian social structure in Turkey. In the formation process of the Committee of Union and Progress, religious orders played an important role as much as the Masonic lodge organizations originating from Thessaloniki.

According to Şerif Mardin, religious order organization forms the basis of micro sociology in Turkey. In a sense, religious orders are the mediators of state-society relations. İskenderpaşa Community, which emerged in 1945-46, is the leading example of religious order organizations in Turkey, and the participants of this movement were students of Istanbul Technical University at the time. Therefore, this movement, which was supported by people who had positive science education, was not a one-time reaction movement, and different organizations such as Nurcu and Süleymancı emerged from among them and turned to economic and political organizations. They gradually began to take part in politics in the 1950s. Demirel, Özal, and Erbakan, as students of Istanbul Technical University, were parallel to this conservative line, and after a while, they took office in the SPO. In other words, they now had a say in the decision-making center of the distribution of capital in Turkey.

In the 1970s, the struggle between central capital and provincial capital was no longer taking place on the CHP-AP axis, but on the AP-MSP axis. The movement that voted red for Süleyman Demirel's budget in 1970 and removed him from power was provincial capital.

The movement, which started as the National Youth Movement in the 1960s and transformed into the National Order Party and then emerged as the National Salvation Party, also included nationalism and the concept of Turkish-Islamic synthesis emerged in the 1970s. The National Salvation Party gained serious political potential with the 1973 elections and from this point on, Demirel inclined to the radical-nationalist right for the rest of his political life and became the head of front governments.

While the MSP was becoming an important political actor in 1973, left-wing movements were also on the rise in the same period. In fact, the rising left was not the moderate left, but the radical left, and the CHP, with its emphasis on the left of center, was seeking the votes of this segment.

In the nationalist front governments of the 1970s, a different right wing organization emerged. In addition to the moderate right wing governments up until that day, the religious and racist right/nationalist right also entered these governments. With the concern that arose against the rise of the left, the moderate right began to act with a more nationalist right. The 1975 coalition also emerged in this environment.

The Turkish-Islamic synthesis was strengthened by the 1975 coalition [7] and a militant spirit was created in that period, especially in education, where everything was explained with the concept of “being national”. This militant spirit also initiated the formation of a process that carried Turkey into the swamp of the deep state and the Susurluk accident. From 1975 onwards, Turkey was dragged into a great internal conflict and anarchy. Those were the days when Demirel said his famous words, “You cannot make me say that nationalists kill people”.

The 1977 elections brought the CHP, which had become the party of the periphery under the bad experiences of the 1975 coalition, to power, but the CHP was still not in power alone with 44% of the votes. The 1977 government came to power under the leadership of the CHP with the support of the deputies who left the AP. This government would be Ecevit's most important strategic mistake. This alliance with the former AP members in order to stop the rising fascism caused the CHP to lose its connection with its left base.

The period between 1977 and 1979 was a period dominated by a completely chaotic environment. During this period, political violence increased, an economic crisis occurred in which no goods could be found on the market, and when the AP won the by-election held for five vacant seats in 1979, Ecevit resigned and the AP subsequently formed the government. From 1979 onwards, a period began in which Demirel's political role weakened and Özal became the main determining factor.

The economic decisions of January 24, 1980 were an official document of this new situation. The January 24 decisions were the reflection in Turkey of the new right, neo-liberal policies of the Thatcher Government that came to power in England in 1979, the Reagan Government that came to power in the USA in 1980, and the Kohl Government that came to power in Germany. [8] The 1980 coup and the Motherland Government that was established in 1983 were a continuation of the DP and MSP.

Türkiye in the Conflicts of the Left and Right

Before examining the Motherland period that affected the 1980s, it would be useful to briefly touch on the political past between Özal and Demirel in order to better understand the relevant period.

Since the DP came to power in 1950, the Demirel-Özal relationship has been increasingly cordial. While Demirel was the general manager of the DSI, Özal was the head of the Electricity Works Research Administration. When Demirel became prime minister in 1965, Özal was the undersecretary of the DPT until 1971.

In the 1969 and 1973 elections, Özal played a de facto executive role for the AP, but was not nominated as a parliamentary candidate. Indeed, in 1977, Özal was not nominated as a candidate for the AP, but for the MSP. Why was Özal not nominated as a parliamentary candidate by the AP, despite being so important to the AP? This is still a controversial issue, and the thesis that there was an ideological difference at its root has been the most popular thesis to date.

In the 1950s, what Istanbul Technical University was for the right, in the 1960s Mülkiye was a school of equal importance for the left. Later, ODTÜ became an important stronghold of this movement. Among the well-known representatives of the left, such as Mahir Çayan, Ertuğrul Kürkçü, and Sinan Cemgil, they also joined the armed militant movement. In Mülkiye, there were also names such as Abdülkadir Aksu, Hasan Celal Güzel, who were in the right movement at the same time, and, very interestingly, Murat Karayalçın, who acted together with these names. Therefore, they were in an armed struggle from the two wings of the political spectrum, the radical left and the nationalist right. In the same period, the Akıncılar, the youth wing of the MSP, were not involved in this struggle.

It is known within the Left that Deniz Gezmiş was trained within the Palestine Liberation Organization. However, there is still no clear answer to the question of where the weapons came from.

It is known that the weapons of the Idealist Clubs were provided by the segments that had established themselves within the state over time and made it their mission to support the idealist movement. In other words, the attitude of these segments is explained by the concept of "state reason (raison d'etat)".

According to the concept of reason of state, the survival of the state is essential and whatever the state does for this survival, whatever comes to the state's mind, the state is right in that. The aim of those who supported the idealist movement within the state was to protect the state against the spread of communism and everything that was done for this purpose was right within the framework of reason of state logic.

The Akıncıs, on the other hand, did not have any support from within the state. Therefore, their organization would only be possible with a very long-term, patient strategic planning. In other words, an organization within the economic mechanisms of the state would create a potential capital and a strategic model would emerge by using the dynamism of this capital. The organizations in the SPO and the Ministry of National Education were part of this purpose. In addition, if the Akıncıs entered an armed movement like the Ülkücüs, they would find the army against them and the army would react to the Akıncılar faster and harsher than it did to other organizations. Therefore, the state became an instrument in the struggle of those who were trying to protect it on the one hand (Ülkücüs) and those who were trying to destroy it (due to the nature of the left movement) and those who were trying to destroy the secular wing of the state (Akıncılar). While the armed conflict was taking place between the Ülkücüs and the leftists, the Akıncılar were quietly developing their long-term strategic reflexes. [9]

Islam in Turkey comes from the tradition of Anatolian Islam. In other words, its foundation is essentially Alevism-Bektashism and the jihadist mentality is not dominant in this Islam. The basic sociological and political starting points of the Islam rising in the world and the Islam rising in Turkey are different. The sociological structure is more dominant in the foundation of our starting point. The politicization process of Islam in our country gained momentum with the fascist September 12 government period and during the same period, the very solid foundations of the path that created today's militant Islamic movements all over the world and led the world to September 11 were laid by the USA during the Cold War and in the early 1980s.

1980s Turkey

The coup of May 27, 1960 was carried out with the idea that secularism was losing ground. The 1980 coup also tried to approach religion on the basis that the state should control religion, but in Turkey in the 2000s, religion came to control the state.

So why, when the state tried to control religion, it was unable to achieve the desired results from military power, a constitution prepared for this purpose, and an education system, while a party like the AKP, which uses religion as a reference in politics, came to power?

The AKP defines itself as a conservative-democratic party that is essentially center-right. However, it has not been able to provide a clear explanation of its relationship with religion. The accusations of having a hidden agenda that it is constantly exposed to stem from the fact that this definition has not been made to a satisfactory extent for the public.

The AKP presents itself to the public with the definition of a party that continues the same tradition as the parties that have come to power with an overwhelming majority since 1950.

The foundation of the new right, whose leaders were Thatcher, Reagan and Kohl and explained above, was laid at the end of World War II. This new right planned to liquidate the statist left that had dominated Europe since 1945.

Finance capital in the world had accumulated in the post-World War II period and needed to make a new leap. It made this leap in the early 1980s, backed by technological developments, and Turkey also kept up with this atmosphere in the world with the decisions of January 24, 1980. In fact, this system envisaged the secularization of the state, but religion (i.e. Islam) had not yet entered a serious politicization process in the world. However, the 1980s were a period when Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan and Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan were supported by the US against the Soviets.

The new right, which rejected the statist left, also brought with it a process of moving away from the state model based on foundations such as social security and social welfare. The free market practices of Özal, who came to power in 1983, deprived the masses that were under state protection until then of this opportunity. In other words, a mass emerged that had lost all state support in the areas of education, health and social security. This meant that the sects, which were tried to be explained above with Şerif Mardin's concept of micro sociology, were strengthened. This mass, which suddenly lost its security and educational opportunities, turned to religious organizations and sects.

Considering Özal and the environment in which they grew up, the turning a blind eye to religious organizations and the social upheavals brought about by very sudden sociological changes prepared the necessary environment for the development of a lifestyle based on religion. Islam and religious organizations began to emerge as a model of social solidarity during this process. The 1980s passed under the influence of all these developments, and 1989 was a year in which the most important political developments after the end of World War II took place: the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In the developments of 1989, international capital, which carried the momentum of the early 1980s to a further level, became even stronger and accelerated the collapse of social security policies even more. Turkey, in addition to its own internal dynamics, became a country that prepared the ground for social solidarity mechanisms, including religious organizations, with a multiplier effect created by global developments.

While evaluating all the developments described above, seeing the world political conjuncture and Özal as the only factors that paved the way for religious organizations would mean leaving this analysis incomplete.

The tradition of the army, which took over the government in the 1980 coup, regarding communism as a threat and its strategy of turning a blind eye to Islamic organizations against it, played an important role in the development of Islam as a model of social solidarity. [10] This was also a first for the army in Turkey, and all these actions were taken under the guise of Kemalism.

The 1980s also created an apolitical political process, apart from religious organizations. According to Özal, ideologies were dead and 2.5 parties and 2.5 newspapers were enough for Turkey. Politics was killed in the 1980s as a social development model, a sociological evolution project. Politics, which should pave the way for broad public participation and civil organizations and require the freedom to be used as a tool to make progress on this path, almost completely ceased to be an element that determines the social order in Turkey and has an effect on the formation of the layers of the sociological structure in the 1980s to an extent never seen before. The result of this was that profit was left uncontrolled and unconditionally to politicians and their supporters. With this atmosphere, Turkey fell under the dominance of plunder, pillage and abuse. In a sense, the AKP is the result of a social fatigue created by this order for years.

September 12th destroyed the institutional infrastructure of politics by banning politics from different classes of society. Therefore, it destroyed a participatory order in which different social layers could be effective on different issues in order to deepen democracy. The name of these practices in political science is dictatorship.

The 1980s represent a period when international capital broke away from state control and became freer. This freedom turns into an effort to control the state during the stages of capital's strengthening. Autonomous capital aims to bypass the control mechanisms of the nation-state and initiates a new process. This also expresses the economic dimension of politicized Islam. The fact that the Welfare Party emerged as the first party in the elections and the AKP came to power as the first party for two terms cannot be explained only as the rise and politicization of Islam in a cultural sense. This also includes the economic dimension of politicized Islam. Today, the fact that there is a significant amount of capital behind the AKP explains this situation.

[1] Horace

[2] Atatürk: “We drank from the source of the French Revolution.” Atatürk: “The truest guide in life is science, knowledge; believing in anything else is superstition.”

[3] “But that the public should enlighten itself is more likely; indeed, if it is only allowed freedom, enlightenment is almost inevitable,” Kant, Immanuel; “What is Enlightenment?” 1784.

[4] Teaching religious practices in schools.

[5] At this point, the Paganist tendencies in the USA, influenced by England, and the effects of these tendencies on the USA need to be seriously examined.

[6] Before the Great Offensive, Ismet Pasha had no opportunity to take off his boots for 21-22 days on the battlefield . At the end of this period, after the war was won, when he took off his boots, all the skin covered by the boots peeled off his body along with the boots. Hilmi Yavuz, who was working as a journalist in the busy days before the 1960 revolution, encountered Ismet Pasha one morning. Hilmi Yavuz was walking around with a 1-2 day beard. Seeing the situation, Ismet Pasha turned to Hilmi Yavuz and asked why he looked miserable, and Hilmi Yavuz said that he had not had time to shave due to the extraordinary days he was in. Ismet Pasha's answer was a great lesson to everyone. He turned to Hilmi Yavuz and said, "Hilmi Bey, my brother, even on the morning of the Great Offensive, I shaved in my tent and faced my soldiers like that."

[7] The average term of office of the 13 governments established between 1969 and 1980 was 305 days (10 months).

[8] The basis of the neo-liberal movement that dominates the world's leading economies is the Chicago school, known as monetarist economics in economic theory and led by Milton Friedman.

[9] The difference between Islam and Christianity emerges at this point. Islam is based on a political culture. The laws of the Quran present a structure that has political content and foresees the formation of the state system. Therefore, the unity of Islam and secularism is definitely out of the question. Although Turkey is a society consisting of a Muslim majority, it is not a society consisting of Muslims who comply with the rules of the Quran and therefore real Muslims. It is possible to say that Turkey only has a “population structure where the majority of people who define themselves as Muslims”. This may be a different interpretation of Islam that no one dares to name, and the name of this interpretation may be “a religion that resembles Islam but has nothing to do with Islam”.

[10] Examples include Kenan Evren reading Quranic verses in public squares, etc.