CHAPTER 1

SECULAR TIMEAND THE INDIVIDUAL

THE REPUBLIC

An overview of the history of the Republic during the twentieth century highlightsthe relationship between the state and Sunni Islam. Through an examinationof this relationship, I will show how Sunni Islam was contained andcontrolled by the state in what is referred to as laicism (government control ofreligion). As I trace three of the most important moments in this history, theAtatürk revolution, the 1950 election, and the post-1980 coup, I discuss howunstable and intertwined with political ideologies this relationship between thenature and meaning of secularity and Sunni Islam has been. By consideringthis history, I can then compare it to how villagers understand time, the nation,and Islam.

The first era under consideration is the transition between the OttomanEmpire and the Turkish Republic. The Ottoman Empire fought on the side ofGermany during World War I. After its defeat, its vast territories were occupiedby victorious European powers, the Allies, many of whom had an interestin the religious minorities, especially in Christians, who had an emergentsense of national identity as Greek, Georgian, and Armenian. The War of Independence,led by Mustafa Kemal (who later took the last name Atatürk), wasfought against this occupation by Europeans. There was widespread dread overthe anticipated dismemberment of the remaining Anatolian heart of the formerEmpire. The ensuing triumph of the national army was remarkable, consideringtheir state of exhaustion following decades of war and epidemics.

Many Turks, like the villagers, consider this victory a miracle. They referto the fallen as martyrs, sehitler. As is evident in descriptions of journeys thatvillagers make to Çanakkale, where Mustafa Kemal was a general in the battleat Gallipoli against the Allies in World War I, this location is treated as a placeof pilgrimage. For instance, when asking a woman to list the important tombsone can visit in Turkey, she mentioned the cemeteries at Çanakkale alongsidethe Mevlana's tomb in Konya. To further justify the sacred nature of the site,another woman explained to me that they do not visit the cemeteries of gavurs(infidels), only those of Turks. This battle, then, is understood as one betweenMuslim Turks and Western Christians.

Many other Muslim citizens also conceptualize this late Ottoman era in religiousterms, as I realized while visiting a packed temporary museum in a tentby the New Mosque in Istanbul in 2012. People crowding over glass cases treatedthe artifacts of the battle excavated in Çanakkale as religious relics, viewing fragmentsof uniform, shoes, weaponry, and soldiers' personal effects with hushedreverence. Interestingly, by treating this battle and its relics as sacred, they legitimizeAtatürk's leadership as an Ottoman military leader. This imbues his laterleadership in the War of Independence with spiritual import, as if the nationwere predestined. They thereby create a foundation of continuity between thesacred nature of the Ottoman and republican states and legitimize Atatürk's roleas a gazi, a holy warrior, who was victorious against infidels. Thus, pious peopleunderstand the state from its inception, as founded by a gazi (as the Empire wasas well), in sacralizing terms. This is regardless of the fact that the Republic wasfounded as a secular state, one which was based on laws constructed by people(imported from the Swiss legal code), not God. This means that for some there iseither a refusal to recognize the full import of secularization, which includes theprivatization of religion, or that this never happened and instead of experiencinga rupture with the Republic, they choose to see continuity with the Ottoman past.

The Republic was founded in 1923 and Mustafa Kemal became its primeminister. He commanded immense power and was able to introduce a series ofsecularizing, modernizing, and westernizing programs, aimed to utterly transformsociety or actually re-create it, since the remnants of the former Ottomanlife were in disarray. In addition to these reforms changing law, language,the way people dressed, and education, the people of Anatolia were managedthrough a population exchange with Greece; millions of ethnic Turks who hadbeen living in Greece migrated to Turkey, and concomitantly millions of OttomanGreeks migrated from Anatolia. Meanwhile, Ottoman Muslims migratedfrom the Balkan territories. The government settled many in villages in westernAnatolia, where they continue to retain a sense of their former Balkan identities.Many millions emigrated—Armenians, Jews, and Georgians—as it becameclear that the population would be reconstructed by the state as being composedof ethnically homogenous Turks. People would either have to conformto this idea, concealing their former identities, or leave. Thus, the compositionof the population changed substantially from being, in contemporary language,multiethnic and multisectarian, to being composed primarily of Turkish SunniMuslims, many of whom were immigrants.

Substantial numbers of Alevis and Kurds, indigenous to Anatolia, remained.The Alevis are a Shi'i-related Islamic group that venerates Ali and thatdoes not use mosques for worship, fast, or pray five times a day. They includemusic and dance in their key ritual of the Cem, and they do not seclude womenor forbid drinking alcohol. Kurds are ethnically different from Turks, beingIndo-European. They are Muslim, either Alevi or Sunni, but have been systematicallydiscriminated against as ethnically and linguistically different.

Through the founding ethno-national idea, that of being a Turk, this eraushered in a vigorous sense of national identity, creating the foundation of anew world, and fighting off divisive forces from within and without. The indivisibilityof the state and the homogenous...