THE LITERATURE

Long celebrated, but controversial secularization theory has long dominated our thinking on modernity and the role of religion in it. The theory predicted that various forces of modernization would drastically curtail the extensive roles religion and its associates play in almost all walks of human life, from economic affairs to social interactions, from personal to political decisions (for useful reviews, Tschannen Reference Tschannen1991; Swatos and Olson Reference Swatos and Olson2000; Gorski Reference Gorski2000; Norris and Inglehart Reference Norris and Inglehart2004). The continuing and even increasing activism of religious figures and groups, however, raised serious doubts about the theory and provoked theoretical challenges, the most serious challenge being religious market theory (Stark and Finke Reference Stark and Finke2000).

Religious resurgence literature was born in the midst of this theoretical chaos. Unlike religious market theory, however, this literature has remained firmly within the conceptual framework of secularization theory. This is evident in the way literature posed its main question: what explains the global resurgence of religion in the last quarter of the 20th century? This literature in fact implicitly asks, how could religions and their representatives' stand successfully against the long historical and supposedly irreversible march of secularization? The phenomenon at hand has been named accordingly: religious revivalism, return of religion, or religious resurgence.

The earliest theoretical response to religious resurgence was to see it as merely a transitional phenomenon. As Smith (1971, 4) put it, “new manifestations of religious consciousness now play an important role in transitional politics, but their prospects for the future seem dim … the general forces of secularization of culture and society will in the long run erode its political effectiveness too.”

Later explanations have generally portrayed religious resurgence as a reaction to the stresses of modernization. For Kepel (Reference Kepel and Braley1994), the resurgence was due to disillusionment with the nationalist elites, the collapse of the Marxist utopia, and the non-attractiveness of the liberal alternative; for Casanova (Reference Casanova1994), the cause was the legitimation crisis of the secular state and secular nationalism at home as well as the legitimation crisis of western models of modernization abroad; for Juergensemeyer (Reference Juergensmeyer1993, 23), it was the perceived failure of secular nationalism to deliver on “its promises of political freedom, economic prosperity, and social justice” and the moral corruption associated with secularism; Pasha (Reference Pasha, Tetreault and Denemark2004, 141) well captures the underlying logic of these explanations: “Under stress of modernization, religion becomes the defensive core of traditional society, the protector of its cultural essence against contamination … resurgence thus assumes the character of atavistic rumblings of tradition, of a past that refuses to melt away into oblivion.”

The literature also went beyond this phase and began to focus on the more positive ways contemporary Islamic movements were modern. A leading scholar on the topic, Esposito (Reference Esposito1998), for example, linked Islamic religious resurgence to disillusionment with the West, but also pointed to a more pro-active effort on the side of religious movements and figures. For Esposito (Reference Esposito1998, 160), religious resurgence was a manifestation of “a desire to reclaim one's past, and to root individual and national self-identity more indigenously, to find pride and strength in an Islamic past and cultural tradition that had once been a dominant world civilization.”

In other words, religious resurgence in the Islamic world was not just a reaction to modernity, but rather a critical engagement with modernity. “Islamism,” as Gole (Reference Gole2000, 93) puts it, could be “thought of as a critical introduction of Muslim agency into the modern arenas of social life.”Footnote ¹ Gole (Reference Gole1997) illustrated this claim in her study of veiled university students who blended modern and Islamic values to define a new womanhood, which was quite different from both that of the secular-nationalist project and that of their more traditional mothers. In a similar vein, Esposito and Voll (1997) took great pains to show not only that Islam and democracy were not necessarily in conflict and but also that Islamic resurgence was an oppositional force against authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world, therefore, was part of the same democratization wave.

By the 2000s the question of why religion resurged in the late 20th century seemed to have lost its originality. The literature instead turned its attention to the ways Islamic groups have embraced modern political and economic institutions and adopted their norms and practices. For example, a whole new literature came into being on the political, more specifically electoral, participation of Islamist parties and their ideological and behavioral transformation in due process (Wickham Reference Wickham2003; El Ghobashy Reference El Ghobashy2005; Schwedler Reference Schwedler2006; Clark Reference Clark2006; Tezcur Reference Tezcür2010; Brownlee Reference Brownlee2010). Islamic groups' role in democratization in their home countries (Heffner Reference Heffner2000; Turam Reference Turam2007; Hashemi Reference Hashemi2009; Yavuz Reference Yavuz2009) and their embracement of and flourishing in post-1980 neo-liberal economic environment (Pasha Reference Pasha, Tetreault and Denemark2004; Yavuz 2004; Atasoy Reference Atasoy2009; Tugal Reference Tugal2009) also attracted great scholarly attention.

Throughout this long journey, however, the literature has remained loyal to the original failure thesis that the elite-driven westernization/secularization/nationalist projects had failed to transform their societies and fell short of delivering their promises. In place of a foreign and imported project, the literature implies, a more authentic and genuine representative of the Muslim societies, contemporary religious movements, have arisen and built upon that failure. This perspective is at work in quite diverse studies. A case in point, White (Reference White2002), for example, explains the electoral success of Islamist parties in Turkey by emphasizing their more skillful use of local networks and their norms and idioms than their rivals, the Kemalists.

This article questions this failure thesis and claims that the secular-nationalist project of state building impacted religious resurgence in more complicated ways than the literature suggests. More specifically, the article shows that Turkish and Iranian state rulers pursued radically different secularizing reforms in the 1920s and the 1930s. In both cases, the modern state made inroads into areas formerly in the hands of religious institutions. But, in Turkey, the state also expanded its activities into religious sphere while in Iran the state did not venture into religious sphere and left it to independent religious communities.

It should be emphasized that secularizing reforms in Turkey went beyond just establishing a firm control over religious institutions, as the Turkish studies like to portray, but also included an ambitious project of shaping religion in Turkey. Receiving generous aid from the late Ottoman religious scholars, the reformers crafted a new understanding of religion, an understanding compatible with the secular nature of the state. The Turkish state then propagated that new understanding throughout the network of mosques spanning the whole country. This variation, the article claims, put Turkey and Iran unto different historical trajectories and impacted the nature and course of religious resurgence in both countries.

It is beyond the scope of this article to explain why Turkey and Iran pursued different state secularization models. An inquiry into this variation must take into account, for example, the differences in state-relation relations in the Ottoman Turkey and the Safavid-Qajar Iran and the differences in Sunni and Shi'a Islam. Leaving this inquiry aside, this article claims the following about how state secularization has impacted religious resurgence in Turkey and Iran. Secularizing reforms in Iran left religious communities institutionally independent of the state and deeply rooted especially in urban populations. On the other hand, secularizing reforms in Turkey incorporated religious institutions into the state, thus greatly undermined whatever independent institutional base religious figures might have in the Turkish society (also see Karasipahi (Reference Karasipahi2009, 90–93) on this point). As a result, by the time state-led industrialization began to falter in both countries in the 1970s, religious figures in Iran and Turkey found themselves in different positions vis-à-vis the state and the regime. It is notable that almost all prominent religious figures of the period, who have since then driven religious resurgence, were state employees in Turkey.

The literature assumes away that the agents of religious resurgence held a strongly negative view of the secular-nationalist project. Inescapably, therefore, religious resurgence could not be any thing, but anti-secular reactionary force. This portrayal might fit well with Iran, but not with Turkey. In the former, the secular-nationalist state did not venture into the religious sphere, therefore, did not have the means to shape neither the masses nor the religious figures' religious understandings. In Turkey, on the other hand, secularizing reforms also involved heavy state investment in shaping religious understandings not only of the masses, but also the religious figures. This strategy not only helped the secular-nationalist state shore up its legitimacy among the masses but also influenced religious figures. Not surprisingly, therefore, the prominent Turkish religious figures identified in the 1960s and the 1970s as their archenemy the Turkish left, not the secular-nationalist state.

In other words, religious resurgence in Turkey was a quite conservative and pro-system movement while that in Iran was just the opposite. From this perspective, it may seem odd, but religious resurgence in Turkey was the success, not failure, of the secular-nationalist project. The latter has shaped the former very much in its own image.

STATE IN RELIGION: VENTURING INTO RELIGIOUS SPHERE

Both Turkey and Iran undertook extensive secularizing reforms in the 1920s and 1930s (Banani Reference Banani1961; Berkes Reference Berkes1964; Lewis Reference Lewis1968). The reforms can be categorized into three broad groups. The first and more ambitious set of reforms took over legal services provided by the religious community, and placed them under total state control. In this vein, the state progressively restricted the jurisdiction of religious courts, and eventually closed them down completely. In both Turkey and Iran, the state completely eradicated the role of religious community in the provision of legal services by the end of reform period. Another set of reforms related to the education system. In Turkey, the state monopolized the education system by closing down autonomous religious seminaries and schools. In Iran, the state expanded its own education system parallel to the religious ones, still allowing the religious community to operate its own school system. The final set of reforms expanded the state control over the religious community's financial resources. Historically, in both countries, the religious communities depended on the administration of waqfs, or pious foundations, for their financial resources. The reforms in both countries eventually put the administration of the waqfs under complete state control.

Seemingly more draconian, the reforms in Turkey are fundamentally different from those in Iran in one important aspect. They also included merging the religious institutions with the state apparatus. In Iran, on the other hand, the state let them continue their activities autonomously from the state. These opposite patterns in turn put Turkey and Iran unto different historical trajectories. Let me first start with Turkey.

Along with the laws closing down all religious courts and seminaries, the Turkish parliament also passed a law founding the Directorate of Religious Affairs. The law put the administration of all mosques and the appointment of their personnel under the jurisdiction of the directorate. The offices of religious counselors, called mufti, and their personnel in all administrative units were also tied to the directorate. The directorate also incorporated numerous research institutes into its body in order to promote further research on Islam. For example, it financed a 12-volume commentary of the holy book of Islam, the Qur'an, translated into Turkish. Thus, all mosque prayer leaders and religious counselors throughout Turkey became state officials. The closing down of the Sufi Orders in 1925 also followed a similar path. The state employed most of the Sufi Sheikhs in the state. Those who left Turkey generally belonged to non-orthodox Bektashi Sufi order (Küçük 2003; Kılıç Reference Kılıç2009). Therefore, the state not only took over those public functions that the religious community in Turkey used to provide, but also their inherently religious functions.

The Turkish reforms in fact dealt the final blow to the already weakened and moribund ties between the religious community and the Turkish society. By the time the reforms were undertaken, the religious community's societal networks had seriously weakened over the period between 1912 and 1922. During this period, Turkish society went through one of its most disruptive experiences ever. The religious community was deeply affected by these disruptions. From biographies, we learn that many religious scholars and Sufi Sheikhs fought in the wars. More importantly, however, seminary students and young members of Sufi orders had been recruited into the army. The disruption of religious networks across the country was inevitable. It is not surprising; therefore, the only serious Sufi challenge against the Turkish state came not from Turkish sufi orders, but from Kurdish ones, who still command Kurdish tribes. In an article, Said Nursi, who mobilized and commanded his own seminary students and Kurdish tribes in the First World War against the Russians and Armenians, vividly depicts the contrast between his seminary before and after the war period. The closure of religious seminaries and Sufi lodges and the incorporation of mosques and offices of the religious counsels into the state apparatus in fact served to sever the already weakened institutional ties between the religious community and society.Footnote ²

The Turkish state has later proven to be quite protective of its monopoly over religious services. Tens of individual biographies from the 1920s to 1950s consistently show that the Turkish state inflicted severe hardships on individual religious figures who did not collaborate with the regime and tried to break the state monopoly over religious teaching and research. Religious figures, such as, Said Nursi, Mehmed Esad Erdebili, Iskilipli Atif, Ali Galip Keskin, Abdulhakim Arvasi, Mehmet Vehbi, and Suleyman Hilmi Tunahan, faced severe punishments from the regime, ranging from exile to death due to their continuation of activities that were distasteful to the regime (Yildirim et al. Reference Yildirim2002). Yet, ironically, the same state put mosques, the offices of religious counsels, and some other Islamic research institutes under its own patronage. Those religious scholars or Sheikhs who were either submissive or cooperative with the state were given positions either in the directorate of religious affairs, or in other state departments.

As a result of secularizing reforms, the religious community lost its institutional ties to Turkish society. It is true that even some of those who accepted positions in the state continued their activities in their homes. However, these activities did not develop within a stable institutional framework. In part due to state oppression, the activities were necessarily bound to take place among a very close circle of friends and students. Even a religious scholar as charismatic as Said Nursi, he probably had no more than 300 close students at the end of his life in 1960 (Sahiner Reference Sahiner1978). With no distinctively religious institution under their control, those enterprising religious scholars had to build their societal networks almost from scratch. The institutionalization of their activities took the form of opening special houses in urban areas. These special houses served as focal points for activities in their local environments where the activist members regularly met with the local people. This re-institutionalization of religious activities outside the state proved to be extremely difficult and time-consuming. Yavuz (Reference Yavuz2005) provides an interesting statistic about the growth of special houses belonging to Said Nursi's group. In 1970, the group had only 45 special houses, in only seven administrative units, Adapazari, Bursa, Erzurum, Istanbul, Kayseri, Konya, and Van (out of 60 odd numbers of administrative units in Turkey).

Two prominent features of the new Republican Turkish society contributed to this slow pace of re-institutionalization of religious activities outside the state. First, as I mentioned, the Turkish state incorporated extensive network of mosques and offices of religious counsels into its apparatus. In order to run these institutions, the state employed most of the well-educated former Ottoman religious scholars and Sheikhs. Thus, religious services including research, teaching, and publication on religion, continued in Turkey under the state patronage. For example, between 1924 and 1950, the Directorate of Religious Affairs distributed, free of charge, 5,000 Qur'an translations and commentaries (each in nine-volumes), 5,000 Buhari Hadith translations and commentaries (each 12-volumes), and 247,000 different religious books all over Turkey (Manaz 2005, 359). The entry of the state into the religious market thus left little space for the enterprising religious scholars to offer religious functions.

Second, unlike Iran, where a native merchant class emerged, in the Ottoman Empire it was mostly the Christian minorities who benefited from increasing trade with Europe in the 19th century. The Turks instead either remained as peasants or opted for a position in the ever-expanding state bureaucracy and army. In the decade between 1912 and 1922, Turkish society witnessed both immigrations and emigrations on a massive scale, which drastically changed its composition. The Christian minorities left Anatolia while the Muslims in the formerly Ottoman territories came to the Anatolia. Those newcomers were mostly peasants who had been dispersed by the state all across Anatolia. Thus, Turkish society was polarized into two big groups: bureaucrats and peasants. The lack of a bourgeoisie class in Turkey generated a new role for the Turkish state: to create a Muslim bourgeoisie in Turkey. The 1929 global depression further strengthened the state's pivotal position in the economy. From then on, the Turkish state embarked upon a state-led industrialization program, which had continued well until the 1970s. Thus, the state held the key to wealth in Turkey. As Bugra (Reference Bugra1994, 5) shows in her study on Turkish businessmen, “success in business seems to be related, first and foremost, to the nature of one's relationship with the state.” A bourgeoisie class totally dependent upon the state thus emerged in Republican Turkey. Any rapprochement with the enterprising religious scholars would prove to be very costly for a businessman.

The implication of this should be clear. The enterprising religious scholars could hardly find an alternative sound financial base within the society. A telling example is again Said Nursi's group. For 30 years or so his dedicated, but poor followers wrote his Qur'anic commentary by hands. According to his close disciple, Bayram Yuksel, Said Nursi's Qur'an commentary began publication only in 1955 (Sahiner Reference Sahiner1978, volume 3). The dependence of the Muslim bourgeoisie class on the state slowed down the re-institutionalization of religious activities. An independent merchant class eventually emerged in Turkey, but not until the 1960s. Even those independent merchants would not be of assistance to those religious entrepreneurs seeking societal bases in Turkey for a long time. As mentioned before, in the 1960s cheap foreign products invaded the Turkish domestic market via state-protected joint-ventures established between the foreign producers and the Turkish businessmen. Stiff competition drove many local producers out of business. Those surviving among the merchant class operated largely small-scale businesses for which bankruptcy perpetually continued to loom.

In summary, right after a decade of war, the Turkish state emerged as the most powerful institution in Turkey, and many constituents of Turkish civil society were severely weakened as a result. The Turkish state further strengthened itself by incorporating religious institutions into its body.Footnote ³ Thus, in the beginning of the Republican period, there was no mass-based religious group in Turkey. Certain individual religious scholars and Sheikhs continued their activities, but within a very close circle of friends and students. In addition, the re-institutionalization of religious activities outside of the state (with a sound financial base in the society) took very long time to materialize.

Let me now turn to Iran. Its reforms with regard to religious institutions positioned Iran on a much different historical trajectory. As I noted, the Iranian state-builders did not or chose not to incorporate the Iranian religious institutions into the state. Facing an ever-encroaching state apparatus at its expense, the religious community embarked upon a course of reorganizing their religious seminaries upon a much sounder financial base. What made this possible was the religious community's loosely structured internal hierarchy and close ties to the merchant class in Iran. Difficult terrain, the lack of state effort to reform the Iranian legal system, and difficult transportation made the Iranian market inaccessible to foreign firms in the 19th century. Therefore, unlike the Ottoman Empire, the expansion of trade with Europe mainly helped the native Iranians. In addition, the failure of the Qajars to centralize state power forced them to resort to patrimonial practices to raise more revenue. Arbitrary taxations and confiscations eventually led the merchants to seek an alliance with the religious community. The tobacco protest of 1882 and the constitutional revolution of 1905 were two prime manifestations of this alliance. Forged against the Qajars' arbitrariness, this alliance had also been strengthened through intermarriages between these two urban groups and joint-ventures in trade. As an indication of this, Fischer (Reference Fischer1980, 94) provides an interesting statistics about the genealogies of four prominent Shi'a scholars of the 1970s, Kazem Shariatmadari, Sehab ed-din Marashi, Hadi Milani, and Reza Golpayegani. Out of 275 total cases, 88 people in the genealogies of these scholars were either merchants or shopkeepers. One hundred five ancestors were also religious scholars. The Iranian religious community developed its loosely structured internal hierarchy toward the late 1850s with the institutionalization of marja-i taqlid (Moussavi Reference Moussavi1985; Reference Moussavi1994). According to this arrangement, the Iranian religious community did not become as hierarchical as in the Roman Catholic Church. It is more appropriate to speak of a religious oligarchy, where one or more Shi'a scholars, called marja-i taqlid, stand at the top of the Shi'a community, whom all others — including all laymen and clergy — imitate. The laymen send their religious taxes and charities to the maraja-i taqlid Footnote ⁴ of the time through the maraja's agents. In return, the maraja disburse the religious taxes and charities to support the seminaries, the poor, and the needy in the society.

Also partly responsible for why the reforms in Iran took a different form, these two features helped the religious community to continue their activities outside the state. In the rest of the Pahlavi rule in Iran, the religious community invested heavily in developing their religious school system. The leadership of Abdol Karim Haeri-Yazdi and Hosayn Borujerdi later proved to be critical. Especially, the city of Qum became the bastion of Islamic learning in Iran (Algar, Reference Algar and Ehsan1990; Reference Algar and Ehsan2003). Haeri-Yazdi moved to Qum in 1922 and brought his many followers, including Rohullah Khomeini, Reza Golpayegani, and Kazem Shariatmadari, who assumed the highest positions in the Shi'a religious community during the second half of the 20th century. Haeri-Yazdi introduced an order to the religious curriculum, instituted annual examinations, and regulated the stipend system. He renovated some old seminaries in Qum and expanded the libraries available to the seminarians. After Haeri's death, Qum seminaries improved further under the leadership of Hosayn Borujerdi who came to Qum in 1944 and assumed leadership of the Qum seminaries (Algar Reference Algar and Ehsan1990; Martin Reference Martin2000; Fisher Reference Fischer1980). Borujerdi succeeded in halting Iranian students' migrations to Iraq for religious learning. This is evident in that by the time he came to Qum, the number of students numbered 2,500 at all seminaries in Qum, and rose 6,000 by the time of his death in 1962 (Algar, Reference Algar and Ehsan2003, 377).

The high-ranking religious scholars financially supported the seminarians, paying them regular monthly stipends.Footnote ⁵ This depended on stable inflow of financial resources into their hands. Hosayn Borujerdi's greatest achievement lies in his instituting a quite orderly system of collecting religious taxes and charities. Before him, the agents having authorization letters from high-ranking religious scholars had voluntarily collected the religious taxes and charities, and forwarded them to Qum. Borujerdi registered all agents, assigned each of them to a clearly delineated district of responsibility and specified precisely their terms of appointment. He also built a register of correspondence. The religious scholars in Qum thus extended their networks all across the country.

Besides running their religious education system, the religious community had been most renowned for their welfare-improving activities. Running through almost all biographies is a constant theme of how prominent Shi'a scholars channeled the religious taxes and charities coming from the believers into activities that improved the lot of the poor, the old, the widows, the orphans, and the needy in society. The narrations give us an image of a marja-i taqlid as a “grandfatherly man with a white beard and twinkling eyes” to whom visitors come to seek for answers. Some ask for financial help; some ask for religious, legal, and even psychological advice (Fisher Reference Fischer1980, 86). More specific examples will illuminate the welfare-improving role of the religious community in Iranian society. In 1933, for example, a flood devastated many homes in Qum. Haeri-Yazdi leased suburban area of Qum to provide housing for the victims. He also granted cash to some others who were displaced. Furthermore, he initiated the construction of two hospitals and one cemetery in Qum. Borujerdi also constructed a hospital and a new seminary in Qum. Elsewhere, he assisted in the construction of mosques and seminaries. Reza Golpayegani, who was one of the maraja of his time, also continued charitable activities: he financed new hospitals, libraries, mosques, and seminaries (Moussavi Reference Moussavi Ahmed and Ehsan2003). At that time a low-ranking religious scholar, Ali Khamanei praises himself in his biography for how he organized local seminary students to help the victims of natural disasters in competition with the state, first in Firdous and Ganabad, and then in Iranshahr.Footnote ⁶

The reforms in Iran thus left the religious institutions autonomous within their spheres of activities. Hence, there developed a fairly institutionalized and financially independent clerical establishment outside the control of the state. The seminaries formed its backbone. The graduate seminarians staffed the mosques all around the country, forming a strong link between the masses and the higher ranking scholars. Religious taxes and charities flowed from the followers into the hands of a few high ranking religious scholars. The religious community also benefited from their historically strong ties with the merchant class that were formed in the 19th century. In short, the concentration of financial resources in few hands enabled the religious community to finance its institutions and undertake welfare-improving services for the people.

The Iranian religious community remained most politically withdrawn during most of the Pahlavi period. There emerged a few individual religious scholars who were actively involved in politics. For example, Hassan Modarres and Abol Ghassem KashaniFootnote ⁷ served in the parliament. Yet, these individuals did so at the expense of losing their influence in religious institutions. A telling anecdote comes from Rohullah Khomeini, who had deep respect for both Hassan Modarres and Abol Ghassem Kashani. According to Khomeini's account, Kashani enters a full room where religious students and scholars meet. No one, even religious students who are far below Kashani in religious learning, leaves his seat for Kashani. Only Khomeini leaves his seat, so Kashani can sit (Moin Reference Moin1999). Both Haeri-Yazdi and Borujerdi, the administrators of Qum seminaries and the marjas of their times, refrained from active political participation. Except for a few protesting declarations, neither was involved in any political activity. Borujerdi's antipathy toward politics went to the extent of prohibiting the members of the religious community to become involved in politics. In this vein, he convened a meeting in Qum in 1949 and invited more than 2,000 members of the religious community. The meeting adopted a strong resolution against involvement in politics. The resolution further mandated that “opposition to this resolution by clergymen would result in a withdrawal of recognition of the offender's status as a professional in the religious institution (Akhavi Reference Akhavi1980, 62–63).

THE CRISIS DECADE: THE FAILURE OF SECULAR-NATIONALIST DEVELOPMENT PROJECT

The 1970s were, using Eric Hobsbawm's term, the crisis decade for many countries (Hobsbawm Reference Hobsbawm1996). Religious resurgence literature explicitly relates religious resurgence to the failure of secular-nationalist development project, which became evident in this decade. Turkey and Iran also plunged into crises of their own in the 1970s.Footnote ⁸ In such a fertile milieu, political movements of all sorts, from ultra-leftists to ultra-rightists, surfaced in the political market. Religious-based political movements were just one of them. Necmettin Erbakan in Turkey and Rohullah Khomeini in Iran most visibly personified the religious-political movements of the 1970s.

The crisis decade began with much promise for Necmettin Erbakan, who became an independent deputy from Konya in 1969. Together with two deputies from Suleyman Demirel's Justice Party, he formed the National Order Party in 1970. Though closed right after the military intervention of 1971, the party was re-established as the National Salvation Party in 1972. Getting 12% of the votes in the 1973 national elections, the party became a partner of coalition government formed by Bulent Ecevit. Necmettin Erbakan became Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of State in the government. Ministries of Justice, Domestic Affairs, Commerce, Agriculture and Husbandry, Industry and Technology went to the party deputies. The coalition lasted only for 10 months. The Party then took part in two Nationalist Front coalition governments,Footnote ⁹ both formed by Suleyman Demirel. In both governments, Necmettin Erbakan served as Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of State. The party could get the same ministries.Footnote ¹⁰ After the fall of the second Nationalist Front in January of 1978, the party had remained among the opposition parties until the military coup of September 12, 1980. In the interim, the party's discourse became more radical. For example, among the slogans of a meeting held in Konya on September 6 of 1980 were “The irreligious state will certainly be destroyed,” “Shari'ah is Islam, the Qur'an is the constitution,” ‘Either Shari'ah or Death,” and “Our Jihad is for Our State” (Manaz Reference Manaz2003). Eventually, the military closed down the party and put Necmettin Erbakan under house arrest in Uzunada, Izmir. The military court later acquitted Erbakan and high party officials in 1985.

In contrast to Necmettin Erbakan's bright start, Rohullah Khomeini's future seemed fairly dim in the beginning of the 1970s. He was in his sixth year of exile in the holy Shi'a center of Najaf, Iraq and was marginalized among the Iraqi Shi'a community. His discontent was manifest when he said to a student, “I do not know what sin I have committed to be confined to Najaf in the few remaining days of my life” (cited in Moin Reference Moin1999, 147). Yet, he had devoted disciples among young clerics in Iran, such as Ali Khamenei, Mahdavi Kani, Musavi Ardebili, Ali Montazeri, and Hashemi Rafsanjani, who had been willing to face arrest, torture, imprisonment, and exile. Two others, Hossein Ghaffari and Gholam Reza Sa'idi, had already died in prison, possibly under torture (Moin Reference Moin1999, 179). However, the Shah was secure enough in 1975 against any danger from the religious community in Iran. In June 1975, for example, seminary students gathered in Qum's famous Fayziyah Seminary to commemorate the 12th anniversary of the 1963 Qum Uprising of Rohullah Khomeini and chanted slogans praising him. The students’ protests lasted for two days and ended with the intervention of the regime's security forces. In his denunciation, Khomeini mentions 45 deaths and more than 300 arrests. The Fayziyah Seminary was shut down and remained so until the end of the Shah's rule. The event was totally disappointing to Khomeini, having instigated no protest from other social groups. Even the Ayatollahs in the city of Qum refused to mediate between the students and the authorities (Kurzman Reference Kurzman2003). “Public outrage was so absent, a seminary student in Qum later recalled, that residents raised no voice or hand to help him and his fellow protestors as they were being arrested and beaten and instead observed passively “as though they were gathered to watch a passion play”” (Kurzman Reference Kurzman2003, 293). The course of revolution, however, gained pace throughout the 1978. Rohollah Khomeini returned to Iran on February 1, 1979 as the undisputed leader of the revolution. In his first press conference held on February 5, 1979, he hinted the character of upcoming regime in Iran:

Rohullah Khomeini's difference from his former politically active colleagues such as Modarres and Kashani lies in his tenacious patience to remain within the religious institutions. He rose to the top and became one of the maraja after the death of Borujerdi in 1962, before taking an active political stance. The latter occurred when he was 61. It was soon after Borujerdi's death that Khomeini agitated against the regime in an event known as 15 Khordad.Footnote ¹¹ In June 3, 1963, he delivered a speech bitterly criticizing the shah. He was immediately arrested and taken to Tehran. The news of his arrest sparked a series of protests in Qum, Tehran, Shiraz, and Mashad. It took six days for the regime to restore the order. Khomeini could only return to Qum in April of 1964. In October of 1964, he accused the regime of treason for a loan of $200 million obtained from the United States. He was arrested again and exiled to Bursa, Turkey in 1964. After 1 year in Turkey, he went to Najaf, Iraq. In the next 13 years, he remained in Najaf, only to be deported to Neauphle-le-Chateau, France.

The regime in Iran only hoped that Khomeini's fame would fade away among his followers. If Khomeini were Kashani or Modarres, this probably would have happened. However, he was already one of the marajas of his time and had supporters among the lower ranking religious scholars. Religious taxes and charities continued to be collected under his authorization in Iran.Footnote ¹² As I discussed before, social unrest mounted after 1975 as the Iranian state took measures against almost all social urban groups. The time was ripe for political activity. This gave his students an opportune to act. They established the Society of Militant Clergy in 1976. The Society then embarked upon an intensive period of establishing bases in local mosques “to organize debates, distribute leaflets, recruit local youth, organize strikes, distribute Khomeini's tapes and statements, supervise demonstrations and provide their localities with food and fuel during the hard winter days of the revolution” (Moin Reference Moin1999, 181).

Even by late 1977, a prospect of a successful overthrow of the regime seemed pretty dim to Rohullah Khomeini. He expressed nothing but despair when he said, “With all this prostitution, the good people of Iran are not saying anything. I do not know why they are not saying anything … When are they going to speak out and say something and protest?” (cited in Kurzman Reference Kurzman2003, 307–308). But, his students pushed forward. They united quite diverse elements of Iranian society under the same banner. In a political regime where legitimate ways of expressing discontent were highly restricted, Khomeini's students' networks in the religious institutions turned those channels into revolution centers. Khomeini's religious authority as a marja religiously sanctified his activist students, who also used religious taxes and charities for revolutionary purposes. For example, they provided food and other basic materials to protesters and strikers to increase their perseverance during the harsh days of the revolution.

In summary, the reforms in Iran left its religious institutions financially and institutionally autonomous from the state. As the state curtailed the religious community's influence in the legal system and educational system, and increased its control over its historical financial sources, the religious community reorganized its financial base and strengthened its networks with the other societal groups. As Iran plunged into a crisis in the mid-1970s, the activist members of the religious community utilized their networks in their religious institutions to turn the crisis into a regime problem. The revolution thus came to Iran.

In contrast, when Turkey entered the crisis decade, the religious groups having social bases outside the state had a very limited institutional network to provide an outlet to the all discontented groups in Turkey. This limited the capacity of such religious groups to channel mounting social problems into a political movement. In addition to the lack of an extensive autonomous institutional network across Turkey, the religious community also did not possess the authority to act as a broker among different dissident groups in Turkey. Mostly responsible for this was the religious community's staunch stance against all leftist groups in Turkey. Indeed, the religious community both within and without the state sided with the right in the politicized environment of the 1970s (Bora Reference Bora1998).

As an example, Fethullah Gulen, a preacher in the directorate of Religious Affairs at that time and later an influential religious leader, had always been a critic of Marxism in all of its varieties. In the highly politicized atmosphere of the 1970s, Fethullah Gulen preached order, respect, and obedience to state authorities.Footnote ¹³ Yet, despite the eloquence and sincerity, all of his calls for order and peace went almost unheeded. Naturally, his group could not grow in size in such a political milieu. Almost all individuals who surrounded him in the pre-1980 period and later constituted the leadership cadre of his group were already pious and ascetic when they met him. For example, Fethullah Gulen met Ismail Buyukcelebi during a morning prayer in Izmir. Abdullah Aymaz was a student at Kestanepazari Qur'an School, Mehmet Ali Sengul a preacher, Kemalettin Ozdemir a son of a well-known follower of Said Nursi, Ahmed Ozer a graduate of Imam-Hatip School and a Said Nursi follower.Footnote ¹⁴ The group's first merchants, including Kemal Erimez, Arif Cagan, and Ali Riza Gulen, were all very pious and were already actively involved in religious activities before they met with Fethullah Gulen.Footnote ¹⁵ Surrounded by already anti-left and anti-communist folks, he could not play the role of a broker among different groups in Turkey.

Neither Erbakan, the face of political islam in Turkey, could make any difference. Yet another indicator of how deeply religious figures in Turkey had allied with the right, Necmettin Erbakan's National Order Party emerged out of a rightist party in Turkey. Further weakening his appeal to diverse groups, both of his parties, the National Order Party and the National Salvation Party hardly had social networks of their own. It was the influential Sufi Sheikh, Mehmed Zahid Kotku, who was the real power behind the party. It would otherwise have been impossible for Necmettin Erbakan to run even in Konya, a stronghold of conservatives in Turkey, as an independent nominee. He had almost no prior religious credentials. His father was a state prosecutor. He graduated from Istanbul Technical University in 1948. After completing his PhD in mechanical engineering in Germany, he became an associate professor at Istanbul Technical University in 1954, and a full professor in 1965. In 1967, he married his secretary at Istanbul University. What would have been really appalling to a religiously sensitive person in Turkey was his wedding ceremony. The groom wore a bow tie and a tuxedo suit, while the bride wore a white wedding gown with no headscarf. The participants offered alcoholic beverages and danced with jazz music. It seems that in no point in his life had he made a social investment in Konya either. When the party was closed down in 1972, Erbakan went to Switzerland. In the meantime, the other members formed the Salvation Party. The influential Sufi Sheikh, Mehmed Zahid Kotku chose the candidates for the 1973 national elections. The party achieved impressive success in the elections, gaining 48 seats in the parliament. Subsequently, Necmettin Erbakan returned from Switzerland and assumed leadership of the party. At this stage of his career, Necmettin Erbakan probably had no more than aesthetic value to the party. He would remain loyal to Kotku until the latter's death in 1980.Footnote ¹⁶ However, Mehmet Zahid Kotku was no different than Fethullah Gulen. He began his religious career at age of 32 as a preacher in his small village. He then moved to Istanbul in 1958 and continued to work in the directorate until 1980. Like almost all religious figures of his period, he led the formation of civil organizations to fight against communism in Turkey. Closely tied to Kotku's Iskenderpasa group, the party had the same weaknesses all religious groups shared in Turkey during the 1970s.

In summary, the reforms eliminated the autonomy of the religious institutions in Turkey. As the emergence of a strong merchant class lagged, enterprising religious scholars found it difficult to institutionalize their activities outside the state. The religious community in Turkey did not have extensive societal networks to channel the social discontent of the 1970s into a political Islamic movement of the type we observed in Iran. The alliance with the right also eliminated the possibility of playing as a broker among different segments of the society. Nor could the political Islamic movement, embodied as Necmettin Erbakan's political parties, bring a much spectacular performance in both accounts.