RELIGIOUS ORDERS AND COMMUNITIES HAVE PLAYED AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN
Turkish politics and society since the Ottoman period. These are part of, or off- shoots from, the mystical Sufi tradition in Islam, called Tasavuf in Turkish. This tradition is based on receiving spiritual guidance from masters forming part of a chain of teachers going all the way back to the Prophet Muhammed. As a result, various masters formed congregations, some of which evolved into large orders (Tariqat) that span countries and continents. In turn, these orders are subdivided into sub-orders or branches (kol) and further into various lodges (dergah). The Naqshbandi order is among the largest such orders in the world, and throughout history has played a critical role in the spread of Islam. In the modern period, there have been offshoots of these orders, which are not strictly Sufi congregations,
but religious communities of a more modern rather than mystical nature. The Nur movement and its offshoots, the Fethullah Gülen movement, is a case in point.
The role of these orders has undergone several phases. Prior to the nineteenth century Western-style reforms, they were tied closely to the Ottoman bureaucracy; importantly, however, they never played a direct political role. In the late Ottoman period, they gradually weakened as Western educational and secular principles gained ground. In the early years of the Turkish Republic, they were systemati- cally suppressed. From 1950 to 2002, they gradually re-emerged on the political scene, effectively usurping power from 2002 onward.
The ebb and flow of the influence of religious orders dates back to the Ottoman defeat at Vienna, and the ensuing military losses to Western powers. This set in motion a process of renewal and reform, which gradually led to the decline of the influence of the Ulema, the clerical establishment. Paradoxically, the Orthodox Naqshbandi order initially benefited because the destruction of the Janissary corps in 1826 also led to the closure of the heterodox and moderate Bektashi order, which had enjoyed considerable influence in the bureaucracy. The Naqsh- bandi-Khalidi order filled the void left by the Bektashis in the bureaucracy and Ottoman intellectual life.
At the same time, the growth of schools providing Western-style secular edu- cation negatively affected the Islamic madrassah system. This secularization threatened the influence of the Ulema over the Ottoman Empire, motivating the religious orders in their ideological opposition to Westernizing reforms.
The purge of the Bektashis led the Khalidi sub-order of the Naqshbandi order, named after Khalid al-Baghdadi, to briefly gain in importance. Baghdadi re- formed this order in the early nineteenth century, dispatching a large number of disciples—116 in all—to spread his teachings across the Ottoman Empire and beyond, including destinations as far away as Indonesia and Afghanistan. The impact of the order on Turkish society and politics far surpasses what is usually assumed; its ideas have exerted strong influence on numerous spinoff movements, including practically all of the politically relevant Islamic social movements in the country today. Almost all religious orders and communities in Turkey hail from the Khalidi order. The most well-known of them is the Iskenderpaşa lodge in Istanbul, which produced the Milli Görüş movement—the “National Outlook” movement created in the mid-1960s which produced Turkey’s Islamist political parties and was led by Necmettin Erbakan. But the Menzil, Nurcu (including the Fethullah Gülen community), the Süleymancı, and Işıkçı groupings, among others, also all trace their lineage to the order.
While the religious orders and schools saw their influence over politics and administration decline in the last century of the Ottoman Empire, they mostly maintained their influence on social life. Moreover, the duality between modern schools and madrassahs gave them a role in education. But with the creation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the sultanate and the caliphate were abolished. In 1924, the Law on Unification of Education (Tevhid-i tedrisat kanunu) similarly abolished all schools providing religious education. Following the 1925 Sheikh Said rebellion in the east, led by a Naqshbandi sheikh, a November 1925 law closed all religious orders, lodges, and monasteries. This ended legal recognition of all religious orders. Furthermore, the transition to the Latin alphabet in 1927 curtailed the influence of religious figures on the state, and especially on the ed- ucation system. This was not a coincidence: Atatürk and his followers explicitly sought to neutralize religious orders and brotherhoods, as well as the influence of their members.
Naturally, this radical revolutionary secular movement generated a backlash. The religious groups were forced underground and adapted their strategies to a long-term struggle. Especially in the eastern parts of the country, where govern- ment writ was weak, the Naqshbandi brotherhoods continued their activities surreptitiously. As religious education was outlawed, many students went abroad for religious education, primarily to Islamic centers in places such as Cairo, Bagh- dad, Damascus or Medina. A significant portion of these students reimported Salafi Islamist thinking and the ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood upon their return to Turkey. While not as strong as in the Arab world, hardcore conservative views soon developed in Turkey, and found expression in the political scene. Im- portantly, these ideas cross-fertilized with the Naqshbandi-Khalidi order’s views, in spite of the order’s Sufi status. In practice, the order’s orthodoxy and politicized nature made it an ally rather than an enemy of the Salafi-influenced ideas, in- cluding those of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The hardcore secularist policies of Atatürk’s time, often termed Jacobin in nature, did not outlive him: even in the period between his death in 1938 and the introduction of democracy in 1950, pressure on religious groups eased somewhat. With the advent of multi-party democracy, secularism surrendered its monopoly on power. The Turkish state rapidly adjusted to both the demands of society and those of international politics. Across society, voluntary secular associations were weak and Islamic groups constituted the leading organized political forces, rivaled only at times by leftist outfits and trade unions. Moreover, given Turkey’s fear of Soviet encroachment, the state from the 1950s onward leaned increasingly on Islam as a bulwark against communism. This trend was true before the 1980
military coup, but it was greatly enhanced during military rule in the early 1980s, when Sunni Islam and Turkish nationalism fused together to form a new state ide- ology. The governing elites always intended to retain control over religion; grad- ually, however, they lost control to the religious brotherhoods and communities.
From the 1950s onward, Islamic organizations re-emerged. To reduce the grow- ing shortage of clergy, the state created faculties of theology and Islamic institutes. In parallel to these state-controlled organizations, the religious brotherhoods grad- ually started emerging from underground. This period saw the organization of religious communities such as the Nurcu, Süleymancı, and Işıkçı.