Author: Nassef Manabilang Adiong

Nassef is the founder of Co-IRIS (International Relations and Islamic Studies Research Cohort), PHISO (Philippine International Studies Organization), DSRN (Decolonial Studies Research Network), and BRLN (Bangsamoro Research and Legal Network). He works on interdisciplinary research between Islam and International Relations and explores the Bangsamoro society as he heads the Policy Research and Legal Services (PRLS) of the Bangsamoro Parliament. Visit https://nassef.info/ for more details.

4th WOCMES: Co-IRIS: Islamic Perspectives on Theory and Praxis in International Relations

One panel proposal entitled “Co-IRIS: Islamic Perspectives on Theory and Praxis in International Relations” for the 4th World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (August 18-22, 2014, METU, Ankara, Turkey)

Co-IRIS: Islamic Perspectives on Theory and Praxis in International Relations

Nassef Manabilang Adiong1, Nassef Manabilang Adiong2, Raffaele Mauriello1, Raffaele Mauriello3, Deina Abdelkader1, Deina Abdelkader4, Abdalhadi M. Alijla5, Waleed Ali6, Karim Khashaba7, Karim Khashaba8
1Co-IRIS (International Relations and Islamic Studies Research Cohort)
2International Relations, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
3History and Philology of Islamic Civilization, University of Rome, Sapienza, Italy
4Comparative Politics, University of Massachusetts, USA
5Public Policy and Governance, State University of Milan, Italy
6Social Sciences and Humanities, Bradfrod University, UK
7Political Science, Cairo University, Egypt
8Political Science, Duisburg-Essen University, Germany

This is a proposed panel of Co-IRIS (International Relations and Islamic Studies Research Cohort). Co-IRIS is an organization interested in the advancement of comparative research between International Relations (IR) and Islamic Studies (IS). It is created by a group of researchers interested in developing and sustaining a body of knowledge that addresses the theories and practices of the Muslim civilization and of Muslim societies with regards to international affairs and to the discipline of International Relations.

Co-IRIS is premised on the idea that knowledge is fluid: peoples adopt and utilize thoughts and ideas regardless of faith, gender, nation, etc. Islam is enormously important today in both international and national domestic politics, but contemporary political Islam cannot be understood without an awareness of its roots and relations to paradigms of IR. Yet, little attention has been paid to the way its ideas originated and how they developed. 

This panel offers comparative studies of IR and Islamic notions on sovereignty, democracy, secularism, and a case study on the Shi‘itologic genealogy of Iranian’s international affairs. Panelists take the same approach as scholars usually do for International Relations and Islamic Studies, examining the mentality, cultural milieu, and political background of thinkers and statesmen by covering relationships of selected concepts and notions in comparing theoretical and practical aspects between IR and IS. 

The first paper is entitled “Islam and International Relations: A Comparative Study on Sovereignty.”

Most of academic studies of Islam and Islamic theology have not examined the concept of sovereignty in Islam from a global point of view. Giving the fact that academic study on sovereignty is undergoing a mini-renaissance where scholars are returning to the basic concepts of it around late 1980 and early 1990s. This paper focuses on comparing the concepts of sovereignty in Islam, putting it in an international framework within the reference to the recent uprisings in the Middle East. The paper discusses the fundamental nature of sovereignty in Islam and the different International Relations theories. It will review the classical perspective on sovereignty and comparing them to Islam’s view of sovereignty. Moreover, this paper will discuss the new works on the problematic nature of state’s sovereignty in Islam. 

The principal theme throughout the paper is that sovereignty in Islam is marked by far from being religious-based. There is a difference between how Islam paved the way to a civil state and how Islamic shticks perceive and interpret Quran and Hadith for political reasons. This paper pays special attention to the recent attempts to reconcile divine and popular sovereignty. It also examines the strong attempts to institutionalize the divine sovereignty by modern Muslim countries. 

The popular uprisings that came to be called “The Arab Spring” have brought the question of sovereignty of the people and legitimacy of the ruler to the surface. It also forces the political Islam parties to account for their visions on sovereignty and authority in the public sphere. This paper argues that concept of God’s sovereignty and nations have become a religious issue that the public would like to put it aside. The question this paper concludes with is which concept of sovereignty Muslims society would accept to bridge what their traditions, Islam and modern societies needed to advance socially and economically. It concludes that Islam and the concept of nation have no great influence on national contexts.

The second paper is entitled “Democracy and the ‘Stillborn God’.”

This paper hypothesizes that the current stress on the separation of church and state in Western liberal democracy was not a constant component of Western political thought. This paper will examine Rousseau’s and de Tocqueville’s writings and how they viewed the role of religion in public life, since in many ways they have theoretically laid the foundations of Western liberal democracy. Thus the paper will analyze whether post-enlightenment Western European liberal thought excludes religion from the public arena. This analysis will have implications regarding the theoretical assumption that secularization is imperative to democratization in the Muslim world.

The third paper is entitled “Islam and Democracy are they Compatible?“

France president François Holland (2013), stated in his speech in Tunisia that ‘Islam and democracy are compatible’ and France will support the result of the democratic election (Holland, 2013). Both concepts seemed to be twinning framework not in conflict as it has been claimed for decades. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, vacuum power was left to be completed. The United States was and still the unique hegemonic power in the world. In order to keep it self interest the US has decided to create a fake enemy which in this case was Islam and Islamic world. The media focus on how Muslim and Islam are anti western, anti-modernity, anti-civilization and liberty that has created a mess and increased the world conflict. The word terrorism was combined with Islam, fundamentalism and rejectionist was the daily life description of orthodox Muslims. 

Thinkers, scholars and policy makers started to write about violence and Islam as tool to create a new academic framework to understand the Islamic movement. The gap of research about the full project of Islam and political Islam was left behind and neglected. The post 9/11 came to encourage this debate and the US used it to carry a global attack on what so call “the War on Terror”. The war on Afghanistan, Iraq and then the intervention in Libya were encouraged under the name of democratization of Middle-East. However, looking at the fundamental mean for both Islam and democracy, there are few differences. Both concepts are seeking the same thing which the human freedom from any servitude. Islam and democracy could be explained differently but at the end they are as twin concepts. 

In the current world, there are around 850 million Muslims are living and enjoying democracy including, Indonesia, Turkey, Malaysia and to some extent Iran. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan mentioned that Muslims are able to rule countries under democracy. This paper will highlight the current debate around Islam and democracy and explore the common ground, focus and fundamental goals for both concepts. It will give examples around the world on how those tow concepts are interacting and functioning long side with each other. It will also show the increased violence and terrorist attack as a lack of democracy not the contrary. 

The fourth paper is entitled “The Islamic Experience and the Secularization Thesis.”

Ernest Gellner identified one striking exemption in the secularization thesis, particularly in relation to state and religion, and that is Islam. In the last century the hold of Islam over Muslim societies and to its people has not diminished but has rather increased. According to John L. Esposito, the conventional wisdom that assumed the centrality of secularism in a modern state and viewed religion as only a private affair has been challenged in much of the Muslim world. Moreover, the resurgence of Islam in Muslim politics and society has in fact signaled a “Retreat from the Secular Path.” The main crux of the paper is to present the relationship of Islam to secularism by presenting an overview of Islamic experience on statecraft (from Medina to Turkish state models), its initial secular state formation, and then moving to a more recent retreat from the secular path. 

The last paper is entitled “Mustad‘afun vs. Mustakbirun Reconsidered: A Shi‘itologic Genealogy of the International Relations Outlook of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

This paper argues for the necessity of advancing comparative research between International Relations (IR) and Islamic Studies (IS). In this framework, it argues for the necessity to integrate relevant aspects (both methodology and findings) of Shi‘itology, the branch of IS that specializes on Shi‘i Islam, into the knowledge of the politics of the Islamic world of academics and practitioners of international relations and International Relations Theory (IRT). On the basis of the evident increasing importance, and unexpected persistence, of the “Shi‘i factor” in determining both the geopolitics and foreign policy of the Near Eastern region, this paper more generally argues for the necessity of taking more seriously Shi‘ism and its historical, cultural, and doctrinal peculiarities.

With the aim of setting a first concrete step into this direction, the paper addresses the issue of territory and geography in Shi‘i Islam international relations outlook within the framework of the specific but unavoidable case of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI). It shows how, although scholars of IR have assumed as an established fact the worldview of Islamic IR as historically based (only) on the dichotomy dar al-Islam (the realm or abode of Islam) versus dar al-harb (the realm or abode of war), from a historical perspective the role of the dar al-Islam versus dar al-harb dichotomy in Shi‘as’ worldview has de facto been extremely limited. The lack of knowledge of IR scholars in this respect has hindered their ability to properly appreciate and locate the modern duality of Islamic IRT represented by the mustad‘afun (oppressed) versus mustakbirun (oppressors) worldview and its development – in the re-elaboration of former president Muhammad Khatami – into the “Dialogue among Civilizations”.

Keywords: International Relations, Islam, Secularization, Democracy

64th PSA: The Politics of Islam

One panel proposal entitled “The Politics of Islam” in conjunction with the PSA Specialist Group on Politics and Religion for the 64th Annual International Conference of the Political Studies Association (April 14-16, 2014, The Midland Hotel, Manchester, UK)

Debates about political issues in relation to Islam maintain a consistently high-profile in contemporary analyses of the relationship between politics and religion. The contributions for this panel explore a number of themes in this area. The papers examine the diversity of institutional and social relations between politics and religion throughout the Islamic world, the nature and justifications of radical ‘Islamic’ violence and terrorism, and the issue around Islam and toleration. 

Title: A different epistemological approach when studying Islam and Politics
Abstract: The “Islamic World” is a huge area of land, with almost 1.6 billion people, integrating multiple different cultural, ethnic and political entities. In the contemporary period religious institutions, movements, and beliefs have had more political importance in the Muslim world than in the West. Although attributed to special features of Islam, which are of some importance, there are other causes, such as, first, different historical experiences in the West and in the Islamic world, and, second, the imperial and colonial experiences suffered by Muslims which made them defensive about Islam and to define (as did some Westerners) the situation in religious terms. One aspect which is usually focused is the Shari’a (normally translated as Islamic Law, but which is a concept with different connotations according to Time and Space) as if one single legal building were used from Morocco to Indonesia, thus giving to that geographical mass some kind of religious connotation. This grill of analysis ignores the different situations in different parts of the Islamic world, where there are countries which until recently were considered secularists but had a state religion, countries which do not have state religion but where the president must be a Muslim, countries where the head of the state is also the Prince of the Faithful, something that does not impede political groups of using Islam to delegitimize the political establishment, or countries which are considered models of secularism at the same time that having a Ministry of Religious Affairs. The aims of this paper are to analyse the diversity of political situations and the role of religion in different contexts of the Islamic world according to this diversity.
Author– Carimo Mohomed

Brief biography– Ph. D. in Political Science (Political Theory and Analysis – Islamic reformism in India between 1857 and 1947). Graduated in History. Main research interest: Contemporary Islamic History and Political Thought. Other interests include the relations between Religion and Politics, and the impact of Modernity, in different cultural and civilisational contexts. Recent publications include “Reconsidering ‘Middle East and Islamic studies’ for a changing world” in International Critical Thought, Vol. 2, n. 2 (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21598282.2012.684479). Officer Research Committee 43 (Religion and Politics) – International Political Science Association. E-mail – mohomed.carimo@gmail.com
Paper Title:
Between Nomocentrism and Antinomianism: The Situational Ethics of Islamist Terror
Paper Abstract:
The present paper opens with the question of how al-Qa’ida and similar Islamist organizations justify the violence that they perpetrate. In order to come to terms with the situational ethics of Islamist terror, I argue that that political actors, whether religiously-founded or secular, are invariably embedded in both political cosmologies (understood as structures of perceptions and narratives which together constitute interest, identity, and intentionality) and political soteriologies (understood as the theory of the set of actions demanded to obtain salvific status for the political constituency). For religiously-founded terrorists, the former sets the constitutive rules, the second the regulatory rules of political engagement, violent or otherwise. It has often been suggested that Islamists, who invoke religious norms and discourses in an effort to either challenge or capture state power, operate within otherwordly ideational milieux. Other observers have suggested that radicals remain utilitarian, and as such do not transcend cost-benefit analyses, even when invoking transcendental themes. The present paper challenges both sets of arguments by considering the notion of ‘the exception’ or ‘supreme emergency’ in radical Islamism’s political cosmology—unveiling thereby a cognitive and rhetorical leap which allows the radical religious activist to acknowledge traditional nomocentric theology while in practice departing from established orthopraxy by a process of discursive reconstrual.
Author Biography:
Naveed S. Sheikh teaches International Relations, with a specialization in Security Studies and Middle East Politics, in the School of Politics, International Relations and Philosophy at Keele University, United Kingdom. He is furthermore the editor of the Routledge-published quarterly Politics, Religion and Ideology (formerly, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions). Educated at the Universities of Buckingham, Durham and Cambridge, he has held fellowships at Harvard, Hosei (Tokyo) and Notre Dame Universities.

3rd presenter is Anthony Black’s Islam and Toleration.

23rd IPSA: Islam and Politics in Turkey

Islam and Politics in Turkey

Convenor: 
Chair: 
Co-Chair: 
Discussants: 
This panel aims to provide a detailed analysis of the state of Islam and Politics in Turkey, discuss major figures and political elites, and focus on the post-independence era. It will include discussions and analyses of the following topics:
1. Islam and identity (formative role).
2. Islam and the forces/challenges of modernity.
3. Islam and the nation-state.
4. Attempts at Islamic reform or renewal.
5. The interaction between the state and religion.
6. The various manifestations of Islam and politics (official Islam, popular Islam, Sufi Islam, Salafi Islam, Islamic movements, militant/jihadi Islam, etc).
7. The role/use of Islam in the democratization process.
8. The future of Islam in Turkey.
Language: 
English
Abstracts:
Session: 
RC43 Religion and Politics

One accepted panel entitled “Islam and Politics in Turkey” for the 23rd World Congress of Political Science (July 19-24, 2014, Montreal, Quebec, Canada)

AK Party: A Conservative or In Pursuit of a New Religiosity?

Author: 
This paper scrutinizes legal regulations in Turkey concerning any intervention on the body including euthanasia, cell research etc., but especially focusing on abortion, c- section and artificial insemination. Controversies and public debates related to these issues among different “life-styled” actors will be presented in a historical context. Thus it is targeted to map a change in role of religion in Turkey in time.

De-Securitizing the Gezi Protest: the Case of “Anti-Capitalist Muslims”

Author: 
De-securitization is proposed by the Copenhagen School as the reverse process whereby an issue shifts out of the emergency mode and back into the normal bargaining processes of the political sphere (Buzan et al.1998). This paper analyzes the role of the “Anti-Capitalist Muslims”, a group of pious activists opposing the neo-liberal policies of the AK Parti government of Turkey, on the de-securitization of the Gezi Park protests. A small protest organized at the end of May 2013 against the destruction of the Gezi Park, a public park, has quickly spread all around Turkey and turned into mass demonstration against the AK Parti government. Four people died and hundreds were injured as a result of the police brutality against the protesters. People attended the protests for different reasons. They resisted ‘the extreme urban development of the past ten years’, ‘restrictions on the freedom of speech and media’ and ‘moralizing intrusions into the citizen’s way of life’ (Gole 2013). A major reason that united such a diverse crowd was Prime Minister Erdogan’s authoritarian discourse demeaning opposing voices as marginal groups. Prime Minister tried to securitize the Gezi protests by presenting the protesters as security threat to the Muslims particularly headscarf women and framing the protests as a secularist and militarist backlash against the elected government. This paper examines how the “Anti-Capitalist Muslims” have challenged this discourse and the polarization between Islamists and secularists promoted by the Prime Minister.

Politicization of the Apolitical: Dynamics of Political Identity Formation among Gezi Park Protesters in Turkey

Author: 
The special feature of the Gezi Park protests in Turkey was that it managed to gain mobilize many apolitical Turkish citizens. It was not the participation of experienced anti-government protesters, but rather the first-time participants, many of which were apolitical citizens, that made the Gezi Park demonstrations a massive event. How did so many formerly apolitical Turkish citizens become politicized as a result of their participation in the Gezi Park protests? How did the apolitical protesters create anti-government attitudes? By using survey data, interview statements, and social media analysis, I show that many protesters in the Gezi Park were apolitical before their participation. They changed their attitude towards Prime Minister Erdogan and his party during the protests from apathy to strong opposition. In line with the self-perception theory of Daryl Bem, I demonstrate that initially apolitical participants developed and further politicized their attitudes by observing their anti-government behavior in the protests. The politicization processes were facilitated by the fact that the contingencies of reinforcement for protesting were very subtle. That is, the apolitical citizens did not have strong incentives to commit to the protests. Because the contingencies of reinforcement were weak, the apolitical participants’ anti-government behaviors were used by them as evidence for their beliefs and attitudes. This paper extends our knowledge on political attitudes and behavior by providing an original research on the dynamics of political identity formation among Gezi Park protesters in Turkey.

THE LOCAL DYNAMICS OF THE CENTRAL POWER: PLACE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE MERSIN MP’S WITHIN THE TURKISH POLITICAL ELITES IN MULTI PARTY PERIOD

Author: 
This study was designed to find general characteristics of Mersin MP’s in Multi Party Period (Since 1950 up to Date). The main aim of this paper is to explain and discuss the general barriers on the path of the power from local to the center. The major factors, may have an influence on the elite recruitment process on the local politics will be searched. On the final stage the place and importance the of Mersin MP’s within Turkish political elites will be examined. On the other word the local dynamics of the central power in multi party period of Turkey will be analysed by using the findings of the “Mersin Case Study”. Social background peculiarities (gender, age, education, occupation, family size) were used to achieve the objectives.
Documentary and historical research techniques will be applied in the paper. An original data set will be produced for analysis from the official publications and records and publications of the Turkish Grand National Assembly which is the main legislative organ in Turkey. The data set will be analysed by using SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences).
Key Words: Mersin, Mersin MP’s, Political Structure of Mersin, Elite, Political Elite, Turkish Political Elites.

Turkey’s Political Islam and the West

Author: 
From the Welfare Party (WP) to the Justice and Development Party (JDP), foreign policies of Islamic parties have attracted disproportionate scrutiny. One of the focal points has been their approach to the West and Western-oriented institutions. This article, based on Jack S. Levy’s concept of learning in foreign policy, is divided into periods to better show the evolution of foreign policy perspectives: the Welfare Party period, the Virtue Party in transition, and the first (2002 – 2006), second (2006 – 2010/11), and third (2011 – ) periods of JDP rule. I argue that from WP rule until the JDP’s first period in power, these parties’ approach to the West has been largely motivated by domestic considerations for different reasons. The WP defined the West as its Islamist identity’s “other” and sought to create an alternative framework; the JDP regarded the West as an instrument to gain legitimacy, both domestically and internationally. Yet, in its second term, the JDP attempted to balance its Western focused foreign policy with alternative complementary frameworks to achieve a more prominent international role. However, the JDP’s third term has been shaped by the Arab Spring and characterised by uncertainty about Turkey’s relations with the west. Hence, JDP rule has seen the emergence of a newly outward-facing political Islam in Turkey.

TURKISHNESS IN BETWEEN NATION AND UMMAH

Author: 
In late 1910s, before the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, a tool should be found in order to mobilize people against the hostile forces, and it was nothing but the religion. The reason why it was religion hides behind the social conditions of the Ottoman Empire, in which the people were just the subjects of the Sultan and were not aware of any other identity, but the religious one. As a result of the Ottoman Millet System, the population were divided with respect to their religion and consequently, during the Turkish Independence War, Muslims, in other words Ummah, unified to protect both themselves and the religion against non­Muslim hostile forces.
After the victory of the war, the nation building process was started by M.K. Atatürk and his colleagues, and the newborn republic had its first constitution in 1924, in which it was written “The religion of the state is Islam…” in its second article. So, would being a “Turk” be equal to being a Muslim? What were the prerequisites of Turkishness, of being a citizen of the Republic of Turkey? Religion?
With laicization and westernization process, religious references were swept away from political structure with intention to create a nation regardless of any religious components; however, within time, Islamic identity started to be pointed out with its superiority and association with real Turkishness. What is the real Turkishness? Is it the new nation identity based on western perspective started to be built with the proclamation of the Republic; or, is it the traditional one based on Ottoman Islamic heritage? Since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, these two identities have been in a struggle with accusing the other of undermining the real Turkishness. While, supporters of new identity have claimed that distinguishments of Islam was a threat of reactionary, supporters of traditional identity have claimed that laicism was against their cultural values and religion itself.
This paper will analyze the struggle of two different perceptions of Turkishness within a historical context of political discourses. In which period of the Republic, have Turkish politics trended to tie up to which identity? With consideration of last decade’s discourses and events, such as Gezi Park Protests, today, what does Turkishness stand for?
Key words: Turkishness, Turkish nation, ummah, Ottoman Islamic heritage, Republic of Turkey, laicism, identity struggle.

IPSA: Islam and Politics in Turkey

ipsa

Update: This panel has been merged with another panel because of recent withdrawals of paper presenters. The new title of the merged panel is “Turkey: Politics, State, and Governance” and the details are available here. Aside from original panelists such as Dr. Tok and Mr. Dalay, I added Mr. Faraz Alidina paper on “Islamism, Secularism and Political Bargaining in Turkey: Revisiting Moderation Theory.” The other new presenters coming from another panel were from Dr. Oguzhan Goktolga’s “A Local Governance Experience in Turkey: From “Local Agenda 21″s to City Councils,” Ms. Nilay Baycar’s “Turkish Democracy under the Justice and Development Party (the JDP), 2002-2014,” and “Between Recognition and Autonomy: Turkey’s International Development Assistance” co-authored by Dr. Serif Onur Bahcecik and Dr. Işıl Anıl.

—–

Co-IRIS will be presenting a panel entitled “Islam and Politics in Turkey” for the 23rd World Congress of Political Science on July 19-24, 2014 in Montreal, Quebec in Canada. <Link>

[ws_table id=”7″]

This panel aims to provide a detailed analysis of the state of Islam and Politics in Turkey, discuss major figures and political elites, and focus on the post-independence era. It will include discussions and analyses of the following topics:
1. Islam and identity (formative role)
2. Islam and the forces/challenges of modernity
3. Islam and the nation-state
4. Attempts at Islamic reform or renewal
5. The interaction between the state and religion
6. The various manifestations of Islam and politics
7. The role/use of Islam in the democratization process
8. The future of Islam in Turkey

AK Party: A Conservative or In Pursuit of a New Religiosity? by Prof. Dr. Istar Gozaydin

This paper scrutinizes legal regulations in Turkey concerning any intervention on the body including euthanasia, cell research etc., but especially focusing on abortion, c- section and artificial insemination. Controversies and public debates related to these issues among different “life-styled” actors will be presented in a historical context. Thus it is targeted to map a change in role of religion in Turkey in time.

De-Securitizing the Gezi Protest: the Case of “Anti-Capitalist Muslims” by Dr. Gül Ceylan Tok

De-securitization is proposed by the Copenhagen School as the reverse process whereby an issue shifts out of the emergency mode and back into the normal bargaining processes of the political sphere (Buzan et al.1998). This paper analyzes the role of the “Anti-Capitalist Muslims”, a group of pious activists opposing the neo-liberal policies of the AK Parti government of Turkey, on the de-securitization of the Gezi Park protests. A small protest organized at the end of May 2013 against the destruction of the Gezi Park, a public park, has quickly spread all around Turkey and turned into mass demonstration against the AK Parti government. Four people died and hundreds were injured as a result of the police brutality against the protesters.

People attended the protests for different reasons. They resisted ‘the extreme urban development of the past ten years’, ‘restrictions on the freedom of speech and media’ and ‘moralizing intrusions into the citizen’s way of life’ (Gole 2013). A major reason that united such a diverse crowd was Prime Minister Erdogan’s authoritarian discourse demeaning opposing voices as marginal groups. Prime Minister tried to securitize the Gezi protests by presenting the protesters as security threat to the Muslims particularly headscarf women and framing the protests as a secularist and militarist backlash against the elected government. This paper examines how the “Anti-Capitalist Muslims” have challenged this discourse and the polarization between Islamists and secularists promoted by the Prime Minister.

Turkey’s Political Islam and the West by Mr. Galip Dalay

From the Welfare Party (WP) to the Justice and Development Party (JDP), foreign policies of Islamic parties have attracted disproportionate scrutiny. One of the focal points has been their approach to the West and Western-oriented institutions. This article, based on Jack S. Levy’s concept of learning in foreign policy, is divided into periods to better show the evolution of foreign policy perspectives: the Welfare Party period, the Virtue Party in transition, and the first (2002 – 2006), second (2006 – 2010/11), and third (2011 – ) periods of JDP rule. I argue that from WP rule until the JDP’s first period in power, these parties’ approach to the West has been largely motivated by domestic considerations for different reasons.

The WP defined the West as its Islamist identity’s “other” and sought to create an alternative framework; the JDP regarded the West as an instrument to gain legitimacy, both domestically and internationally. Yet, in its second term, the JDP attempted to balance its Western focused foreign policy with alternative complementary frameworks to achieve a more prominent international role. However, the JDP’s third term has been shaped by the Arab Spring and characterised by uncertainty about Turkey’s relations with the west. Hence, JDP rule has seen the emergence of a newly outward-facing political Islam in Turkey.

Turkishness in Between Nation and Ummah by Ms. Didem Doganyilmaz

In late 1910s, before the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, a tool should be found in order to mobilize people against the hostile forces, and it was nothing but the religion. The reason why it was religion hides behind the social conditions of the Ottoman Empire, in which the people were just the subjects of the Sultan and were not aware of any other identity, but the religious one. As a result of the Ottoman Millet System, the population were divided with respect to their religion and consequently, during the Turkish Independence War, Muslims, in other words Ummah, unified to protect both themselves and the religion against non­Muslim hostile forces.

After the victory of the war, the nation building process was started by M.K. Atatürk and his colleagues, and the newborn republic had its first constitution in 1924, in which it was written “The religion of the state is Islam…” in its second article. So, would being a “Turk” be equal to being a Muslim? What were the prerequisites of Turkishness, of being a citizen of the Republic of Turkey? Religion? With laicization and westernization process, religious references were swept away from political structure with intention to create a nation regardless of any religious components; however, within time, Islamic identity started to be pointed out with its superiority and association with real Turkishness.

What is the real Turkishness? Is it the new nation identity based on western perspective started to be built with the proclamation of the Republic; or, is it the traditional one based on Ottoman Islamic heritage? Since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, these two identities have been in a struggle with accusing the other of undermining the real Turkishness. While, supporters of new identity have claimed that distinguishments of Islam was a threat of reactionary, supporters of traditional identity have claimed that laicism was against their cultural values and religion itself.

This paper will analyze the struggle of two different perceptions of Turkishness within a historical context of political discourses. In which period of the Republic, have Turkish politics trended to tie up to which identity? With consideration of last decade’s discourses and events, such as Gezi Park Protests, today, what does Turkishness stand for?

Key words: Turkishness, Turkish nation, ummah, Ottoman Islamic heritage, Republic of Turkey, laicism, identity struggle.

Introducing Co-IRIS (International Relations and Islamic Studies Research Cohort)

Copyright © December 29, 2012 by Co-IRIS and Nassef Manabilang Adiong

Co-IRIS (International Relations and Islamic Studies Research Cohort) is an organization interested in the advancement of comparative research between International Relations and Islamic Studies. It is created by a group of researchers interested in developing and sustaining a body of knowledge that addresses the theories and practices of the Muslim civilization and of Muslim societies with regards to international affairs and to the discipline of International Relations.
About 
The cohort for the study of International Relations (IR) and Islamic Studies (IS) is created by a group of researchers interested in developing and sustaining a body of knowledge that addresses the theories and practices of the Muslim civilization and of Muslim societies with regards to international affairs.
IR as a field is not a unilateral project rather it is an intellectual platform. The aim of Co-IRIS is to explore Islamic contributions to the field. The inclusion of Muslim contributions is not meant to create an isolationist, judicious divide between what is Islamic and what is not. The Co-IRIS is created to act on the inclusion of that knowledge as a building bloc in the IR field.
The Co-IRIS is premised on the idea that knowledge is fluid: peoples adopt and utilize thoughts and ideas regardless of faith, gender, nation, etc. The mainstream idea that all knowledge presented by the West is from an “Orientalist” perspective or that there is a “clash of civilizations” are both notions that are antithetical to our mission.

History 
The Co-IRIS was previously known as IR-IS Research Cohort. It was created by Nassef Manabilang Adiong on December 29, 2012 through various social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. His blog/website and twitter served as temporary e-places where he formulated his thoughts and disseminated information.
It was his aspiration to introduce Islamic contributions to the field of IR because he observed a tremendous non-recognition of Islamic scholars theories and practices of international relations among IR scholars. His dream is to find shared values and mutual understanding between IR and IS. Until he found avenues and academic tools as starting point to gradually materialize his aspirations, he was able to edit a book, create a section conference, and organize meetings with people with similar passion and interests. Firstly through exchanges of correspondence with Dr. Raffaele Mauriello and Dr. Deina Abdelkader and, later, a meeting in Rapallo (Italy) from October 30 to November 02 held as part of the annual Exploratory Symposia organized by the European International Studies Association (EISA), the core Co-IRIS group was born.
Founders
Nassef Manabilang Adiong is a student of theories of International Relations and politics of Islam(icate) with research interests in the concepts of nation-state and civilization. He is the author of the following articles: “Nation-State in IR and Islam” in the Journal of Islamic State Practice in International Law, “The U.S. and Israel Securitization of Iran’s Nuclear Energy” in The Quarterly Journal of Political Studies of Islamic World, “The Palestinian Refugee Question: A Constitutive Constructivist Interpretation” in Alternatives: Turkish Journal of International Relations, “Ideology that Spawns Islamist Militancy” in Frank Shanty’s Counterterrorism: From the Cold War to the War on Terror, and encyclopaedic entries such as civilization, nation, nation-state, International Relations, nationalism, pan-Islamism, Philippines, Qatar, and Suez Canal for various publishers including ABC-CLIO, SAGE Publications, Inc., and Wiley-Blackwell. His first edited book entitled “International Relations and Islam: Diverse Perspectives” is published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing on August 2013. He can be contacted via his website at <http://www.nassef-m-adiong.com>.
Deina Abdelkader is currently an assistant professor in the department of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Abdelkader is a Comparitivist and International Relations specialist. Her scholarly interests and research, focus on the Middle East and North Africa, Comparative Democratization in the Muslim World, Islamic Activism, and the Role of Muslim Women in Religious Interpretation. She is the author of Social Justice in Islam (2000) and Islamic Activists: The Anti-Enlightenment Democrats (Pluto Press, 2011).She has also authored a number of articles; her latest is : Coercion, Peace and the Issue of Jihad in the Digest of Middle East Studies, and a book chapter titled: “Modernity, Islam and Religious Activism”, The New Global Order and the Middle East, Ashgate Publishers, (2012)  Abdelkader is also one of two women on the Islamic Jurisprudential Council of North America (Fiqh Council of North America) and she is also part of the editorial board of the Digest of Middle East Studies, and the new President of Voile : “Voices of Islamic Law and Ethics”.  <deina_abdelkader@uml.edu>
Raffaele Mauriello is an Italian historian of the modern Middle East. He holds a PhD in Islamic Civilization: History and Philology from the Sapienza, University of Rome (Italy). He has published several peer-reviewed essays and chapters in edited volumes on Shi‘a Islam history and on Iranian and Iraqi geopolitical affairs. He is also a translator of both Arabic and Persian languages. In 2013, he was awarded the World Prize for the Book of the Year of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the field of Islamic Studies for his monograph Descendants of the Family of the Prophet in Contemporary History: A Case Study, the Šī‘ī Religious Establishment of al-Naǧaf (Iraq) published on December 2011 by Fabrizio Serra. He can be contacted through his email address, i.e. <raffaele.mauriello@me.com>.
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Hany Bardissi is an IT Architect that specializes in enterprise integration, Web design, and IT implementation. He can be reached at <http://www.bardissi.org/>.







Networks

– Please like and click ‘get notifications’ the official Facebook page of Co-IRIS. The URL link is https://www.facebook.com/IslamicInternationalRelations
– Follow the official twitter page of Co-IRIS. The URL link is https://twitter.com/Co_IRISmate
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NB. You may post any relevant matters such as news, conferences, scholarships, research grants, seminars, summer schools, (non)degree programs, personalities (featured scholars, students, or practitioners), books, articles, journals, events, etc. pertaining to the advancement or progress of comparative research between IR and IS, and share it to everyone. 
The mission-vision is to achieve the goals stated below:
Short-term goals:
– Introduce Co-IRIS to institutions, think-tanks, and prominent scholars.
– Gather interested people to exchange research notes and share experiences.
– Survey review of related literature.
– Develop working concepts and frameworks of studying the subject matter.
– Present papers, panels, and sections to international conferences.
– Maintaining a dedicated website with profiles of all interested people, news, and research agenda.
Medium-term goals:
– Establishing a university or research center headquarter that will sustain Co-IRIS.
– Solicit funding via donations or volunteered contributions.
– Organize Co-IRIS annual international conference, seminars, and workshops.
– Establish an e-magazine on current affairs.
Long-term goals:
– Establish e-branches and linkages to several institutes and universities in different countries.
– Provide financial research grants and scholarships to fellow members primarily to (post/undergraduate) students and early career academicians.
– Establish an academic journal.
– Building up IR-IS as a form of research agenda through developed paradigms and methodologies.
If you have any ideas, opinions, comments, advice or suggestions, please do not hesitate to email us at info@coiris.org.
Thank you for your attention and kind consideration.