Islamic Political Identity in Turkey

Extract

Islamic Political Identity in Turkey. By M. Hakan Yavuz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. 352p. $49.95.

In November 2002, Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the majority of the votes in the general elections and formed the government. AKP's electoral victory was a major development in Turkish politics, one that was the culmination of the growing importance of Islamic identity since the 1980s, but it also reflected the impact of the liberalization of the country's economy and politics in the 1990s. AKP was formed by a breakaway faction of the main Turkish Islamic political movement, disavowing that movement's more contentious Islamic demands in order to adopt a moderate and democratic platform. The meteoric rise of a party with origins in Islamic activism in the most secular Muslim country, one that has served as the paragon for secularism across the Muslim world, is a member of NATO, and is an aspirant to membership in the European community, has raised a number of interesting questions. There is much in the example of Turkey that is instructive for the study of Islamic activism, but there has so far been a dearth of studies on the subject. Hakan Yavuz's seminal study seeks to fill that lacuna.