New Turkey: Towards a “progressive Islam”

In my book, which was my doctorate dissertation and published under the following tittle “The Republic of the Seconds” I answered to the question: “How can a transformation be made in Turkey or under which conditions can a transformation occur? The transformation starts with the change of international conjuncture in the communities where there is a strong state tradition like in Turkey, the state reflects this transformation to all sections of the community. There is an important point which must be mentioned: This transformation doesn’t occur by building a new state. Existing state transforms itself and adapts to the international conjuncture. And then, the internal dynamics, conforming to the “new” international conjuncture, are mobilized and the transformation process starts. Turkey in 1923 under Ataturk era, represented by the 1st Group at the parliament established Turkey using the European mentality which means that the common ground of the people was the Turkish national identity and the religion, Islam, was an obstacle to this founding ideology and thus confining to the private sphere. But the situation started to change with Erdogan era, who represent the 2nd group. With the implementation of the New Liberalism in Turkey from the 1980s onwards, Islam which was hidden started to gradually appear and reach its summit under Erdogan; Islam interacted with the capitalism, thus transforming the context of Islam which adopted the protestant way of thinking. As mentioned above, Islam started to express itself using the global lexicon gaining the character of “progressivity’. This progressive Islam is going to be the common ground for the Turkish society in the new Turkey in 2023.

REFERENCES:

[1] Firstly the JDP members gave very importance to the religious freedom and in 2007 the notion of the president to be elected by the people, legitimated with the referendum which held in October 21st 2007, that the 68,95% of the Turkish people decided that the President should be elected directly by the people. (101 Article in Turkish constitution).
[2] The Religious Development Party was founded in September 5th 1945 and considered as the first opposition party. The name of Religious Development Party in Turkish is Milli Kalkınma Partisiç The meaning that given in english to word milli is national, which I believe is not appropiate because this party political position was opponent to Ataturk founder philosophy which based on the national character of turkey. The ciment of Turkey was the term “turk”. Therefore, the members of this party promote the religious values for the them the word milli, has only and only religious context and not national. Thats why I used the word religious instead for national.
[3] Turgut Ozal became prime minister at 1982 and was the 8th President at 1989.
[4] For more details it will be in my second book which is going to published in 2019.