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RELIGIOUS MILITARISM AND ISLAMIST CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION IN TURKEY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2015

Pınar Kemerli
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Abstract

This article focuses on Islamist conscientious objectors (COs) in Turkey who have resisted both mandatory conscription and the Turkish state's use of Islamic discourses of jihad and martyrdom to legitimize it. Examining military conscript training and the post-1980 coup national school curriculum, the article first outlines the Turkish state's production of a particular interpretation of Islam and its dissemination of it through nationalist and militarist discourses and practices. The article then pursues an ethnographic analysis of Islamist COs’ resistance to conscription through nonviolent civil disobedience based on antiauthoritarian and antinationalist interpretations of Islam. Weaving together their own interpretations of jihad and martyrdom with transnational theories and ideologies, Islamist COs present a powerful critique of Turkish militarism and its religious claims. A focus on Islamist COs potently highlights the diversity of Islamic groups and sensibilities in contemporary Turkey, and the difficulties faced by nationalist projects to discipline religious imaginaries and put them to the service of the modern state.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , May 2015, pp. 281 - 301
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

The history of modern Turkey is often depicted as an exemplary story of secular nationalization. Consistent with a modernist understanding of nationalism as a “secular ideology that replaces the religious systems found in premodern, traditional societies,” such accounts present an evolutionary transformation from an Islamic Ottoman past to a secular Turkish present.Footnote 1 Modernist scholars argue that the emergent Turkish Republic's project of institutional secularization at the turn of the 20th century eliminated religion from the public sphere and established a secular grounding for modern Turkish national identity.Footnote 2 Recently scholars have begun to scrutinize this approach, highlighting the important role of religion in the formation of Turkish nationhood and in national policies. For example, some have traced the roots of Turkish national identity to the Ottoman millet system (which organized the population by confessional community); others have demonstrated a strong emphasis on religion in state policy, including in regard to immigration and taxation.Footnote 3 Another body of literature focused on secularism has criticized the depiction of Turkish secularism as an aggressive elimination of religion from the public sphere, showing how the regulation of religion in Turkey has involved processes far more complex than mere repression.Footnote 4 Scholars have shown that secular power “accommodated and integrated Islam into the system in various ways,”Footnote 5 through, for example, the institutional privileging of Sunni Islam over Alevi Islam, the political accommodation of powerful Sufi orders (tarikat), and the institutionalization of prayer leader schools. With few exceptions, however, this critical scholarship neglects Turkey's attempt to generate a pious and patriotic defense force through the institution that is most readily identified with the secular regime: the Turkish military.Footnote 6

The article has two objectives. The first of these is to explore Turkey's appropriation of Islamic discourses of jihad and martyrdom in cultivating military obligations and sensibilities. To pursue this objective, I look at the religious content of conscripts’ military education and the extension of this content to the civilian curriculum after the 1980 coup. I show that, rather than abandoning prerepublican religious values attached to soldiering, the Turkish Republic refashioned these values and channeled them toward the interests of secular nationalism. This rechanneling enabled the staunchest defender of secularism in Turkey—the Turkish military—to enjoy strong religious legitimacy, and perpetuated popular support for conscription despite the thousands of lives claimed by the continuing Turkish–Kurdish conflict.

The second objective is to analyze the Islamist conscientious objection movement based upon ethnographic data that I collected through interviews with Islamist conscientious objectors (COs). COs oppose the validity of the state's nationalist and militarist interpretation of Islam. Informed by the Qurʾan, the hadith (sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), and socialist and anarchist thought, they interpret religious concepts invoked in Turkish military discourse, such as jihad and martyrdom, in a way that negates rather than supports national obligations such as military service, especially in the context of a conflict with another Muslim community (i.e., the Kurds). In so doing, COs represent a powerful challenge to the religious foundations of Turkish militarism. The Islamist conscientious objection movement demonstrates not only the diversity of Islamic groups and sensibilities in contemporary Turkey, but also the difficulties faced by nationalist projects to discipline religious imaginaries and put them to the service of the modern state.

NATIONALISM AND SECULARISM IN TURKEY

Turkish modernization is conventionally depicted as “the most radical secular revolution” to have occurred in the Muslim world.Footnote 7 This depiction stresses that radical early republican reforms modernized the legal system, the institutional structure, and social norms inherited from the Ottoman era while also establishing a new territorially defined and civic conception of Turkish nationhood,Footnote 8 all resulting in a “radical rupture with the Islamic past.”Footnote 9 This account further suggests that Turkish secularism has involved authoritarian state repression of religion rather than an institutional separation of religion and state. Ahmet Kuru has described this mode of secularism as “assertive”: “the state excludes religion from the public sphere and plays an ‘assertive’ role as the agent of a social engineering project that confines religion to the private domain.”Footnote 10 Kuru comments that this social engineering project has, for example, “outlawed private Islamic education and teaching the Koran to children under the age of twelve, banned prayer or other religious expressions in public schools, and promoted an individualized version of Islam in state schools.”Footnote 11 Importantly, the Turkish military is identified as the primary institutional force that sustains and defends assertive secularism, through coups if need be (as it has done four times).Footnote 12

This account has recently come under criticism. Rather than pioneering “a radical rupture” with the Islamic past, scholars have argued, Turkish modernization incorporated religion as a constitutive element of nationhood. Şener Aktürk has suggested, for example, that “the multi-ethnic Muslim millet (‘nation of Islam’), which existed as a legal and social category in the Ottoman Empire for 470 years (1453–1923), persisted in the Republic of Turkey as the unofficial definition of Turkish nationhood, but the discursive legitimation of this definition shifted from religious affiliation per se to participation in the War of Liberation as a Muslim front against non-Muslim enemies.”Footnote 13 As Sinem Gürbey notes, that religion—rather than ethnicity or language—was integral to Turkish nationhood is further demonstrated by early republican nation-building policies.Footnote 14 In the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, for instance, Turkish-speaking Christians were exchanged with Greek-speaking Muslims in Greece. Mesut Yeğen has similarly shown that far from rendering Muslimhood irrelevant, the republican state made it the “key to achieving Turkishness” for ethnic minorities, especially the Kurds.Footnote 15

The view that Turkish secularism is hostile to religion and eliminated it from the public sphere has also been disputed. Rather than disestablishing religion, secular nationalization in Turkey brought it under strict state control. The institutional locus of this control has been the Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı (Directorate of Religious Affairs),Footnote 16 which was established after the abolition of the caliphate in 1924 and the state's appropriation of the properties of pious foundations. As Andrew Davison has noted, overseeing “all cases concerning the Exalted Islamic Faith which relate to beliefs (itikadat) and rituals of worship (ibadat),” the Directorate authorizes and disseminates a specific version of Sunni Islam that is compatible with secular modernization and nationalism.Footnote 17 Şerif Mardin refers to this version of Islam as “official Islam,” promoted by the state as rational and enlightened.Footnote 18 By contrast, the state has portrayed religious interpretations and practices conflicting with this version of Islam, and thus challenging the image of enlightened religiosity, as superstitious and reactionary. In some cases, it has coercively repressed them,Footnote 19 as with the crackdown on tarikats during the early republican era or the controversial ban on female headscarves in schools until 2011 and in public offices until 2013.Footnote 20 In terms of beliefs and practices that are consistent with “official Islam” and thus beneficial to state interests, the state incorporates them into ideals and practices of secular nationalism and actively promotes them. As a result, rather than unmitigated hostility, Turkish secularism entails a pragmatic approach to religion that involves selective promotion and frequent accommodation.

A vivid example of this pragmatism is the projection of Islamic values onto the institution most readily identified with the secular regime: the Turkish military. On the surface, the popular religious veneration of the modern Turkish army—conventionally referred to as “Peygamber Ocağı” (Hearth of the Prophet)—and the use of honorific religious idioms such as gazi (warrior fighting for Islam) and şehit (religious martyrs) to refer to injured and deceased members may appear as cultural residues of an Islamic past that have survived institutional secularization.Footnote 21 But, as we shall see, it was the republican state that systematically cultivated this religious veneration. Beginning with secular nationalists’ portrayal of the Turkish War of Independence (1919–22) as a jihad against invading forces, the Turkish state has continually appropriated the traditional religious connotations of militarism and rechanneled them toward bolstering secular nationalism.Footnote 22 Although understudied in the literature on Turkish secularism and the military, the institution of universal conscription is perhaps the most influential medium in this effort.

MILITARY TRAINING OF CONSCRIPTS

Established in 1927, universal conscription is codified in the Turkish constitution as both a right and duty of citizenship. Throughout its existence it has served as a pedagogical tool for the state to transform the nation's young men into model citizens.Footnote 23 While in service, conscripts are inculcated with basic knowledge about modern governmental institutions, social formations, and economic structures, and given essential skills for operating within them. In acquiring these skills, conscripts are also prepared to become educators themselves,Footnote 24 for on reentering civil society they are expected to disseminate what they have been taught to other citizens, especially women, who are not conscripted into the army. Universal conscription is thus critical to engineering a disciplined citizenry that cooperates with the secular regime and reproduces its governing principles.

While sociopolitical modernization pursued through conscription has been frequently studied, the use of Islam in military training has received scant attention. The Turkish state trains conscripts not only in modern forms of knowledge but also in a particular version of Islam. This religious education is based on a textbook prepared by the Directorate in 1925, which since then has seen seven editions, the last appearing in 2002. Entitled Askere Din Kitabı (The Book on Religion for the Soldier), the book is intended to create a pious and obedient national defense force by generating patriotic religious dispositions and nationalist sentiments.Footnote 25 Several of its recurrent themes warrant attention. First, the book links the Turkish people's allegedly invincible military ethos to the strength and purity of their faith (iman). Addressed as “God's sword,” conscripts are invited to honor their glorious military history by performing military duties with religious zeal.Footnote 26 This association between military glory and religious fervor is further reinforced by the codification of conscription as a dual obligation of citizenship and Islam, a way of “paying your blood and life-tax” to the state and of fulfilling the Islamic requirement of jihad.Footnote 27 The invocation of jihad in this context lacks any theological elaboration or depth. In fact, the book eschews theological elaboration of any kind in favor of the rhetorical and cursory use of religious concepts, possibly to render its message accessible to all segments of the population, the uneducated included.Footnote 28

An important goal of this rhetorical use of Islamic concepts is to prevent desertion. Soldiers are taught that “eternal punishment awaits those who desert the army or run away from combat.”Footnote 29 But there is also an attempt to instill enthusiasm for performing military obligations. For example, one line reads, “Our Prophet decreed: ‘Run to the barracks when you are called for service.’ Our obligation is to obey this command and to run to the barracks with joy.”Footnote 30 In such appeals, a difficult obligation of citizenship is represented as a desirable experience through which religious fulfillment can be sought and religious worth can be proven.

Among the honors associated with military service, the most important is perhaps martyrdom, “the highest honor in Islam after the rank of the Prophet.”Footnote 31 If need be, soldiers must be prepared to sacrifice their lives for the nation and thereby achieve martyr status. However, a healthy passion for martyrdom should not be confused with suicidal military conduct, a formidable sin in Islam. Warning the soldiers against such a misinterpretation, the book stresses that a soldier's primary objective in battle must be to stay alive and fight to the end, and not to pursue death at the expense of victory.Footnote 32 This emphasis is important insofar as it reveals the army's cautious attempt to counterbalance the glorification of selfless military conduct with the nation's need for effective defense of the homeland. Military education is intended to cultivate not a blind quest for martyrdom but a disciplined martial heroism that advances national interests and state prerogatives.

Finally, martyrdom discourse operates as a powerful tool with which the state and the military provide the nation psychological relief and resilience when lives are lost in the line of duty. The need for such support has been especially acute since the onset of the Kurdish insurgency in 1984. Thousands of conscripts have lost their lives in military operations against the Partiya Karkeyrên Kurdistan (PKK; Kurdistan Workers’ Party). In emphasizing martyrdom discourse, intensified as a result of the war, the military promises immortality to those put in harm's way while assuring the broader community of the value of national sacrifice.Footnote 33

In sum, by integrating pre-republican Islamic values of soldiering within military conscript training, the military has attempted to engender a pious and patriotic citizenry that dutifully performs its military obligations and complies with state policies and practices.

THE TURKISH–ISLAMIC SYNTHESIS AND THE SCHOOL CURRICULUM AFTER THE 1980 COUP

The Kurdish insurgency and the conditions of sociopolitical insecurity to which the war between the state and the PKK gave rise, facilitated the extension of the religious content of military education to the civilian sphere. This development was part of a broader sociopolitical transformation that occurred in Turkey beginning in 1980. In that year, the Turkish military intervened in politics through a military coup for the third time, taking the reigns of government for a period of three years. The military justified the coup as a patriotic response to political disintegration and social chaos produced by the previous decade's ideological struggles, laying particular blame on communism. In an effort to suppress communism's appeal, the junta forged an alliance with the sponsors of an ideological movement known as the Türk–Islam Sentezi (Turkish–Islamic Synthesis).Footnote 34 Developed by a group of conservative intellectuals known as Aydınlar Ocagi (Hearth of the Enlightened),Footnote 35 the Turkish–Islamic Synthesis was a cultural program advocating the systematic integration of Sunni Islamic values into Turkish culture.Footnote 36 It aimed to create a pious and docile population supportive of national unity centered around Turkish identity, a paternalistic form of governance, and a strong military. The junta government officially endorsed the Turkish–Islamic Synthesis, after which it inaugurated a substantial revision of the national school curriculum.Footnote 37

As Sam Kaplan has shown, the most striking feature of the revised curriculum was its emphasis on the Islamic significance of martial valor. Similar to military conscripts, students in national schools were now taught that the Turks—“a nation of soldiers from birth”—converted to Islam because this religion best “fit their spirit of warfare.”Footnote 38 On the topic of fallen soldiers, the curriculum emphasized the Islamic significance of national sacrifice, drawing upon the religious traditions of gazi and şehit.Footnote 39 For example, the eighth-grade reader stressed the religious meaning of sacrificial citizenship dispositions: “People who sacrifice their own existence for that of the nation and state are worthy of love and respect. They shoulder an important responsibility toward God in their duties.”Footnote 40 The reader addressed male students directly: “My son, let him grow up and become a soldier. If he dies he will be a martyr for the faith, if he lives, a holy warrior.”Footnote 41 Yet it was not only boys who were subject to this curriculum; girls would also be trained in the classroom to appreciate the Islamic value of national defense. In fusing military sentiments with religiosity, the national curriculum contributed to the religious legitimization of conscription while sanctioning authoritarian governance and the military's operations.

Ironically, the turn toward religion after the 1980 coup unintentionally allowed the Islamist and Islam-sensitive parties to gradually gain political power, culminating in the takeover by Turkey's current moderate Islamist ruling party, Adelet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP; Justice and Development Party).Footnote 42 An offshoot of the Islamist Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) that briefly ruled in coalition with secular parties before being ousted from power by the military in 1997, the AKP has been in power since 2002. The party has been promoted as the progressive and liberal face of Islam, and has thus appealed not only to pious Muslims but also to right-of-center and liberal segments of the population. During its first term in government (2002–7) in particular it championed global integration, economic development, and a liberal model of secularism characterized by tolerance, individual freedom, and an open and free public sphere. The most important political achievement for which the party is credited is the disempowerment of the Turkish military, a feat it accomplished through two government-backed investigations—Ergenekon and Sledgehammer—launched in response to the discovery of grenades in a retired military officer's house in 2007. The investigations implicated hundreds of active and retired officers in alleged attempts to stage a coup against the AKP.Footnote 43 While the controversy surrounding the investigations continues—especially with respect to the use of suspicious and inconsistent evidence, long detentions without charge, leaking of information to the pro-AKP press, and the extension of the investigation's reach to civilian critics of the government—the military no longer casts a shadow over politics.Footnote 44

Yet the disempowerment of the military has not led to the democratization of civilian politics. On the contrary, the AKP's victory over the military and other challengers to its rule led to its assumption of an authoritarian face: it has made increasing use of the legal system and the police force to crush opposition. This transformation has been accompanied by the party's growing emphasis on the religious symbolism of military matters and patriotism. For instance, the celebration of the Ottoman Empire's 1453 conquest of Istanbul has reached unparalleled extravagance under AKP rule. The party has also inaugurated controversial projects aimed at reviving Ottoman military grandeur, such as the reconstruction of the historic Ottoman Barracks over Taksim's Gezi Park, which ignited nationwide protests during the summer of 2013.Footnote 45 Prime Minister Erdoğan himself adamantly highlighted the religious value of military duties. In a recent response to EU pressure on Turkey to legalize conscientious objection, which is not recognized in Turkey,Footnote 46 he commented that “conscientious objection has never been in our government's agenda. Military service has been considered as a most sacred national duty. There is a reason that we call our soldiers Mehmetçik, which means ‘little Muhammad.’ We see military service as ‘the Hearth of Muhammad.’”Footnote 47 The AKP's continued emphasis on the religious value of military service and portrayal of military service as an authentic indicator of patriotism suggests that it endorsed the Turkish state tradition of using Islam to generate a pious and patriotic military ethos.Footnote 48 The party's successive electoral victories (in the 2002, 2007, and 2011 general elections) demonstrate that Turkey's Muslims apparently approved this endorsement. In sum, rather than initiate a critical reevaluation of the instrumental uses of religion by the state, the AKP government continues to use Islamic discourses to militarize nationalist sentiments, and thus helps sustain the popular prestige of military service.Footnote 49

CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION AND THE CASE OF ENVER AYDEMIR

Given this long history of culturally strong and politically orchestrated entanglement between religion and militarism, it is not surprising that Turkey's small conscientious objection movement was initially secularist.Footnote 50 The movement emerged in the early 1990s out of an antiwar protest, and its first activists were anarchists and atheists. One of these activists, Vedat Zencir, explained his conscientious objection as follows: “I value the life of each individual to be as sacred as mine without attributing any religious significance to it. Thus, I cannot be part of any institution that sets out to kill for any reason.”Footnote 51 The movement went through several phases and gradually came to include participants with different political convictions.Footnote 52 By the mid-2000s, activists self-identifying as feminist, gay, and Kurdish became prominent voices within the movement.Footnote 53 The result of antimilitarism’s expanded social outreach, the new COs targeted the sexist and homophobic character of militarism in Turkey and the continued oppression of the Kurds. However, religious pacifism, or a critique of militarism grounded in religion, was not part of antimilitarist politics and discourse in Turkey until 2007, when a pious Muslim, Enver Aydemir, declared his conscientious objection.

Aydemir's struggle began in July 2007 after he was taken forcibly to a soldiers training brigade in Bilecik, a small town in northwestern Anatolia, to perform his compulsory military service. Then thirty-three years old, Aydemir was a CO and had previously informed the local draft office of this position. At the Brigade, he reaffirmed his position and refused to don the military uniform. This gave rise to an arduous struggle between Aydemir and the Turkish military that played out in the courts, where the crux of the issue was the legal ambiguity of CO status in Turkey. While the United Nations and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) define conscientious objection as a human right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief,Footnote 54 Turkey refuses to acknowledge conscientious objection either as a right or, indeed, as an offense.Footnote 55 As a result, COs are charged with crimes that do not accord with their action. These crimes include “desertion” and “persistent insubordination,” as described in the Turkish Military Criminal Code, and “discouraging individuals from performing military service,” as stated in Article 318 of the Turkish Penal Code (former Article 155).Footnote 56 The latter offense is prosecuted more severely if committed through public means of communication and print media, in which case it is considered an “aggravating circumstance” that increases the punishment by half (Articles 218 and 318).Footnote 57

Accordingly, Aydemir was prosecuted for offenses other than conscientious objection. First he was arrested for disobedience and jailed in Eskisehir military prison for several months. In October 2007 he was brought before a military court but released on the condition he promptly present himself to his unit. Aydemir did not join his unit, leading to another warrant for his arrest. In December 2009 he was arrested after a random identity check on a visit to Istanbul, where he had been invited to deliver a speech on conscientious objection.Footnote 58 Once again he was transferred to Eskisehir military prison. Aydemir remained behind bars until his next trial on 30 March 2010 at which he was charged with desertion and sentenced to ten months in prison. Already having served much of this time during his pretrial detention, he was commanded to join his military unit, initiating yet another round of disobedience and sentencing. This cycle continued until his last trial in June of 2010 where the charge was persistent insubordination. This time the court decided that instead of returning him to jail or his unit, it would send him to the Gülhane Military Medical Academy (GATA) in Ankara for psychiatric assessment. Consistent with his previous conduct, Aydemir refused to wear military clothing or to undergo psychiatric testing at GATA. Nevertheless, he was issued a medical report exempting him from military service on the grounds that he suffered from antisocial personality disorder, which made him unfit to serve.Footnote 59

This Kafkaesque legal experience has been shared by other COs since the emergence of the CO movement in Turkey. As human rights lawyer Hülya Üçpınar reports, COs’ lives in Turkey are fractured by arbitrary interference and severe restrictions.Footnote 60 In addition to facing the constant threat of imprisonment, they are deprived of fundamental citizenship rights such as the right to vote. Because they are ineligible for formal employment, they also face the threat of poverty.Footnote 61 COs find relief from these difficulties only if and when their opposition to conscription on ethical, political, or religious grounds is delegitimized as pathological. The latter tends to take one of two forms. The first is branding the insistence on CO status as a sign of antisocial personality disorder, which is what happened in Aydemir's case. The second is applying to CO cases military regulations against conscripting homosexuals, a group the army considers categorically unfit to serve.Footnote 62 In the case of COs who are also gay, the courts rely on these regulations to disavow the political character of their resistance. Thus, either through dubious mental assessments or homophobic military regulations, COs are stripped of political agency, foreclosing their broader visibility in Turkey's public sphere.

Yet what distinguishes Aydemir's case from other similar cases is that Aydemir's stance is rooted in his Islamist worldview. It was Aydemir's opposition to the secular character of the state and the army's role in protecting it that led him to become a CO. In his view, the secular regime prevented pious Muslims from fulfilling a fundamental requirement of their religion to live life in “total submission” to God.Footnote 63 Moreover, by propagating an “official religion” through the Directorate, the state sought to create “obedient Muslims” compatible with its secular structure, a political project in which the Turkish army was a leading actor. And as a devout Muslim who “refuses the official Turkish religion,” it was impossible for Aydemir to become a soldier and defend this system, for doing so would mean violating his deepest values.Footnote 64

Aydemir's ascription of sovereignty to God, and his consequent rejection of secular democracy and the nation-state system, renders his religious worldview both similar and distinct from that associated with radical Islam in Turkey. Radical Islam emerged in Turkey during the 1970s but has remained marginal to Turkish politics. The most prominent groups, such as the Turkey branch of Hizbullah, were founded in the 1980s after the state, following the military coup, showed benign neglect toward Islamic political mobilization. These groups champion the violent overthrow of the secular regime and its replacement with an Islamic order.Footnote 65 Among their constituents, the popularity of the army—the “guardian” of the secular regime—is naturally low.

In their rejection of democratic sovereignty and secular legal structures, and in their desire to create an Islamic order, Aydemir and radical Islamists share commonalities. However, their tactics and interpretations of Islam are both starkly different. To begin, Aydemir rejects the violent methods of radical Islam, and considers groups such as Hizbullah, which frequently use violence, as “perversions of Islamism.”Footnote 66 Moreover, unlike the adherents of these groups, Aydemir has progressive views on gender equality, social diversity, and tolerance. While he favors the establishment of an Islamic order based on the Qurʾan, he argues that within this order women and men should be treated as equals, and secularists, non-Muslims, and atheists should not face repression. Finally, unlike radical Islamists, Aydemir confronted the secular regime over the institution of conscription, and he did so nonviolently and with a willingness to submit to the consequences of his actions.Footnote 67 These differences preclude categorizing Aydemir as a radical Islamist.

The disapproval of Aydemir's conscientious objection in popular Islamist media is further evidence that his religiosity does not accord with prevalent Islamist orientations. Turkey's highly circulated newspaper Zaman, run by the powerful Gülen movement, presented Aydemir's act as inauthentic and unpatriotic.Footnote 68 According to the prominent Islamist intellectual Ali Bulaç, who writes for the paper, conscientious objection is a foreign adaptation alien to and unsupported by Islam.Footnote 69 In a similar vein, the AKP-supporting newspaper Yeni Safak criticized Aydemir for abandoning the Islamic obligation to serve in defense of the community.Footnote 70 Discussions in radical religious-nationalist blogs were more hostile, condemning Islamist conscientious objection as a “deviant” practice that reflects the degeneration of Islam in Turkey.Footnote 71

This widespread opposition reaffirms the view that dominant Islamist groups in contemporary Turkey—including the AKP and Gülen—endorse rather than challenge the militarist-nationalist interpretation of Islam that has been utilized by the state in support of Turkish militarism since the foundation of the republic. Given the prevalence of this view over time, Aydemir's religious outlook and the Islamist conscientious objection it inspired represent still marginal, emergent Islamic outlooks in Turkey. Buttressing this view is the fact that within Turkey's Islamic public sphere only small and marginal groups have supported Aydemir. The most prominent of these groups is Antikapitalist Müslümanlar (Anti-Capitalist Muslims), which is made up of students who follow the teachings of the prolific Muslim intellectual İhsan Eliaçık. Influenced by the democratic philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and by socialism, Eliaçık professes a modernist interpretation of Islam.Footnote 72

While politically marginal, the Islamist CO movement and groups such as Antikapitalist Müslümanlar convey the increasing diversity of religious orientations in contemporary Turkey. They deploy new technologies and communication networks to spread their message and forge connections with other social actors. While the long-term consequences of their political opposition remain to be seen, Islamist conscientious objection raises an urgent question: How does this new form of resistance relate to, and challenge, the religious valuation of military service? And what are its broader consequences? To answer these questions, I now turn to a closer examination of Islamist conscientious objection.

ISLAMIST CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION

Aydemir's conscientious objection inspired other Muslims. Since 2007, dozens have declared conscientious objection on Islamic grounds, while hundreds have become active members of the antimilitarist movement.Footnote 73 As we shall see, Islamist COs come from different backgrounds and propose diverse interpretations of Islam. While the majority of them are men, four women have also joined the cause. And yet despite this diversity, the overlap in their critique of Turkish militarism and its authorizing religious norms enables us to treat Islamists COs as a relatively cohesive group.

An important characteristic of Islamist conscientious objection is its opposition to the Turkish state and military's deployment of the concept of jihad, which COs claim is neither appropriate nor legitimate. For example, while not engaging with the concept per se, Aydemir flatly rejects the possibility that a secular state can be an agent of jihad. Because Turkey is a democratic country, he argues, its laws and governing institutions conform to “the will of the people” rather than to “God's will transmitted through the Qurʾan.”Footnote 74 This suggests that the practices of a secular state, including its warfare, cannot be associated with religious concepts. Muhammed Serdar Delice—a former nationalist who, “disillusioned by the army's claim to a sacred status,” declared his conscientious objection five months into military service—argues that even if one were to ignore this crucial fact, other conditions exist to render the state and military's claims to jihad illegitimate. Delice elaborates: “There are two kinds of jihad. The first is the ‘minor jihad’ (qital), which involves the obligation to fight against oppression and to relieve the suffering of the Islamic community. The second is ‘the greatest jihad’ (jihād al-nafs), which refers to Muslims’ struggle against their passions and weaknesses.”Footnote 75 Implying that pacifism is not legitimate in Islam,Footnote 76 Delice suggests that the only kind of army that can be a legitimate agent of “minor jihad” is one that fights in defense of the umma, the supranational community of faith. As the army of a nation-state, the Turkish army does not defend the interests of the umma, and as such, fighting in it would not fulfill the obligations of jihad.

More poignantly, Delice claims that Turkey's involvement in systematic oppression of, and warfare against, another Muslim community (the Kurds) over the last three decades decidedly violates the requirements of jihad. He cites two Qurʾanic verses to argue that “it is prohibited in Islam to kill other Muslims, or wage jihad against them”:

It is not conceivable that a believer should slay another believer, unless it be by mistake (4:92).

But whoever deliberately slays another believer, his requital shall be Hell, therein to abide; and God will condemn him, and will reject him, and will prepare for him awesome suffering (4:93).

By portraying its military operations as religiously sanctioned, Delice suggests, Turkey incites its citizens to bear arms against “fellow Muslims” and thereby engage in transgressive acts. In his view, this is a “misuse” of Islamic values and a way of “manipulating” the Muslim public. Delice feels that the Turkish state has been highly successful in inciting hostility towards the Kurds and regrets his own upbringing in a nationalist community where he was “taught to see the Kurds as traitors, rather than Muslim brothers.” Through his conscientious objection and activism he hopes to raise awareness among Muslims about the sacrilegious aspects of “oppressing” and “fighting against” another Muslim community.Footnote 77

Criticism of the use of the concept of jihad to legitimize the war is the cornerstone of the resistance of another Islamist CO named Yusuf. Yusuf attended a Gülenist private high school and lived in a dormitory run by the community. His education was based upon the teachings of the movement's founder, Fethullah Gülen, which are collected in fifty-five books known as the Pırlanta Serisi (Diamond Series). While Yusuf appreciated Gülen's emphasis on religious tolerance and global dialogue, he grew uncomfortable with the nationalist undertones of Gülenist teachings. Yusuf began to criticize his educators’ insistence upon the sacredness of the state. His own reading of the Qurʾan, which was discouraged by his teachers on the grounds that “he was not qualified to interpret it,” suggested that nationalist wars are not justifiable in Islam. These disagreements with the Gülenist community led him to search for other networks, and through social media he met a group of anarchist high school students involved in the CO movement. His initiation into this new group eventually resulted in his declaration of conscientious objection as an “anarchist Muslim.”

Yusuf considers the war against the Kurdish guerillas as a “dirty war” that is dressed in a fake Islamic overcoat.Footnote 78 He argues that by attributing religious value to its nationalist operations, the army “anesthetizes” (narkozlamak) people so that “they obey unconditionally.” Rather than comply with this deception, Turkish Muslims should remember the message of the al-fātiḥa sura: “Thee alone do we worship; and unto Thee alone we turn for aid” (1:5). Endorsing this message, Yusuf pledges to disobey “what is imposed on him” either in the name of nationalism or religion.

Muhammed Cihad Saatçioğlu's conscientious objection is similarly defined by defiance against the manipulative use of religious rhetoric. Saatçioğlu is the son of a prominent Muslim activist, Hüda Kaya, who, along with her three daughters, faced the death penalty for advocating the freedom to wear the headscarf during the secularist crackdown that followed the 1997 military intervention. Growing up in this activist family, Saatçioğlu later joined the Devrimci Sosyalist Işçi Partisi (DSIP; Revolutionary Socialist Workers’ Party), and was briefly imprisoned for allegedly supporting terrorism in 2011.Footnote 79 After being acquitted of these charges in 2012, he declared his conscientious objection. Saatçioğlu criticizes the Turkish army's appropriation of Islamic passions, stressing that religious values are desecrated when deployed “to shed the blood of brothers [Kurds].”Footnote 80 Saatçioğlu hopes that his and other Islamist COs’ struggle will inspire more Muslims in Turkey to declare conscientious objection and thus refuse to participate in the “murderous practices” of the nation-state.Footnote 81

In addition to critiquing the nationalist interpretation of jihad, Islamist COs emphasize that other features of the Turkish military also preclude its association with jihad. For Mehmet Lütfü Özdemir, an Islamist CO who is a follower of Eliaçık and participates in the group Antikapitalist Müslümanlar, one of these features is the hierarchical character and permanent structure of the Turkish army. His conscientious objection is informed not only by the Qurʾan and Eliaçık's socialist-leaning interpretation of Islam, but also by non-Islamic sources such as Christian pacifism and theories of nonviolent resistance developed by Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King. Accordingly, he emphasizes Islam's social egalitarianism and the limits it places on the use of violence. Referring to the Prophet's own military practices, he claims that hierarchical and permanent military organizations are not legitimate in Islam: “during the Prophet's time the only allowable military mobilization was voluntary militias.”Footnote 82 Within these militias, participants were treated as “interchangeable equals,” and upon the completion of their task the militias were immediately dissolved in order to prevent the emergence of an established hierarchy. This precedent suggests to Özdemir that the Turkish army, as a standing army, cannot be an agent of holy warfare.

Moreover, COs argue that given Islam's emphasis on voluntarism, the compulsory character of military service also hinders its association with jihad. As Aydemir explains, jihad is “voluntary submission to God's cause.” “Nobody, not even the Prophet himself,” he goes on, “[has] the right to impose on anyone an obligation to fight. At most, he [the Prophet] can encourage me to participate in jihad, but he cannot force this on me, or punish me if I disobey.”Footnote 83 According to Özdemir, coercing someone to participate in military duty would be like treating that person as a slave. Referring to an anecdote narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari, one of the six canonical hadith collections of Sunni Islam, he compares his resolve to disobey the draft to the resolve of the enslaved African Bilal-i Habesi—one of the first seven converts to Islam—who maintained his religion despite being subjected to torture at the hands of Mecca's pagan notables. Özdemir insists that Muslims should follow the example of Bilal-i Habesi by opposing conscription, which denies them individual will and choice.

Özdemir also voices anticapitalist values in his criticism, which reflects the influence of socialism on his interpretation of Islam:

Like all other armies, the Turkish army was established to protect socioeconomic relations of domination. Political ideas such as democracy, citizenship, and security are myths manufactured to embellish this ugly truth. To get rid of militarism, we must first destroy this system of accumulation that encloses our lands and minds. It is so written in the Qurʾan, but Turkish translations do not properly render the message: “God and his Prophet are at war against those who do not give up outstanding gains from usury” (2:279). The Prophet and his companions fought against those who accumulated power and wealth and subordinated others. If this message of Islam were to be properly understood, Muslim youth in this country would burn down banks wherever they see them, not kill and die for this system and its military.Footnote 84

From this perspective, the army's protection of the capitalist economy makes military service a violation, not a fulfillment, of the obligations related to jihad.

All in all, in the view of Islamist COs neither the sanctioning of the Turkish army as the agent of jihad nor the characterization of military service as a holy duty rests on valid Islamic foundations. In their rendering, far from being consistent with jihad, military service in the Turkish army is a violation of its basic principles, especially with respect to the killing of other Muslims in Turkey's nationalist military operations.

This oppositional interpretive logic shapes COs’ positions on the issue of martyrdom as well. Although in Islamic doctrine God promises blessings to those who are martyred on behalf of Islam, COs object to the application of this religious idiom to soldiers who have lost their lives serving in the Turkish military. The majority of these deaths, they argue, occurred in military operations against the Kurdish guerilla movement. As we have seen, Islamist COs consider these operations as involving acts prohibited by Islam and thus illegitimate according to Islamic values. As Delice put it: “The Kurd in the Southeast is a Muslim, and so am I. He shouts at me the battle cry, ‘Allah, Allah,’ and I shout the same. The Qurʾan forbids shedding the blood of another Muslim. How could one talk about martyrdom when committing forbidden (ḥarām) acts?”Footnote 85 In this recasting, fallen soldiers appear as tragic characters forced to commit sacrilegious acts rather than as pious heroes courageously giving up their lives for the nation, as they are portrayed in official and nationalist discourses in Turkey.

Another CO, Inan Mayıs Aru, makes a similar point by referring to the fallen conscripts as “sacrificial victims of national sovereignty.”Footnote 86 Aru declared his conscientious objection in 2008 at the mausoleum of Shaykh Bedreddin, the prominent Sufi theologian who led a revolt against the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century in Istanbul. While not a member of a Sufi sect, Aru is influenced by the antiauthoritarianism and antimaterialism in Bedreddin's teachings, which he weaves together with an anarchist political stance. Emphasizing that martyrdom—shahāda in Arabic—literally means bearing witness to God's greatness, Aru criticizes the political use of martyrdom discourse. As an example of this political usage, he refers to the 1979 Iranian revolution, and in particular to its ideologue Ali Shariati's recodification of martyrdom:

Shariati argued: “In the permanent battle of history—everywhere and every place, all fields are Karbala, all months are Moharram, all days are Ashura.”Footnote 87 Well, yes, this holds a valuable historical message for me as a Muslim, but once you turn this formulation into a culture of sacrifice, you create a very problematic discourse. Historical incidents become myths, and these myths are used to orient people towards nationalistic ends. The notion of martyrdom is today used simply to prolong the continuity of national armies and states. Interpreted this way, it is more compatible with nationalism than religion.Footnote 88

If ascriptions of martyrdom aim to put religious devotion to the service of nationalism—as Aru claims to be the case in Turkey—such ascriptions are unjustified in terms of Islam. Thus, in Aru's view, from an Islamic perspective it is improper to refer to soldiers who have been sacrificed in the Turkish nationalist cause as martyrs. As Aru suggests, their death “bears witness” not to the greatness of God, but rather to the power of the national sovereign.

The nationalist “misuse” of Islamic martyrdom is further problematized by Nebiye Arı, the first Muslim woman to declare her conscientious objection for Islamic reasons.Footnote 89 Growing up in a devout family in the central Anatolian city of Konya—known as the most pious city in Turkey—Arı heard about conscientious objection for the first time after Aydemir's declaration. This prompted her to read about the history of conscientious objection in Turkey and abroad on social media. When she moved to Istanbul after high school to study theology, she began to attend the meetings of CO rights activists and their organized protests. In 2011, she declared her conscientious objection “to seek refuge from nationalism and militarism in God's sovereignty.” For Arı, martyrdom discourse in Turkey is profoundly contradictory because it validates a secular army and sustains “the power of an unjust state.” More poignantly, it helps perpetuate a nationalist gender division according to which men serve the nation on the battlefield while women fulfill the role of patriotic mother and obedient wife, raising the next generation of soldiers and mothers and teaching them the value of martyrdom. “As a Muslim woman,” Arı argues, “I refuse to participate in this role crafted for me, and do not want to sacrifice the men I love, or my children, for the dirty war in the Southeast.”Footnote 90 Problematizing the role martyrdom discourse plays in enlisting the support of pious women, Arı lends an important Islamic voice to feminists’ and women COs’ struggle against militarism in Turkey.

In sum, Islamist COs oppose the nationalist interpretation of the idiom of martyrdom. For them, death in the Turkish army is a tragic consequence of an illegitimate obligation imposed by the nation-state. Far from qualifying as religious martyrdom, they argue, sacrificing oneself for the military violates some of its crucial preconditions. Importantly, while disavowing the possibility of martyrdom in the Turkish army, COs propose a competing venue for it. If martyrdom means bearing witness to God's sovereignty, it is best sought through disobeying authorities that “rival God,” an act of shirk in Islam.Footnote 91 As Aydemir comments, compulsory conscription is a perfect example of the state's rivalry with God's authority “over matters of life and death.” This implies that martyrdom might be achieved by refusing to serve in the army. In this sense at least, Islamist COs consider their own civil disobedience as an act of martyrdom, a way of bearing witness to God's total sovereignty over the individual and her conscience. The message they send to the Muslim public in Turkey is that to achieve martyrdom one should oppose conscription and declare conscientious objection rather than as Özdemir put it, “serve and die for the Turkish army.”Footnote 92

CONCLUSION

This analysis of military education and the national school curriculum in Turkey has shown that the state's attempt to cultivate strong martial passions and nationalist sentiments has involved the systematic appropriation of invoked religious traditions of warfare and martyrdom. This appropriation played an important role in generating widespread appeal and enthusiasm for the institution of conscription in Turkey. While most Turkish men may continue to perceive military service as a religiously sanctioned national duty, there has been some resistance to this religious valuation. In particular, an emergent Islamist conscientious objection movement has begun to challenge the religious mandating of military service. Opposing the nationalist and militarist interpretations of Islam underpinning military discourse, Islamist COs ground their disobedience in competing understandings and practices of Islamic concepts. As such, their resistance conveys the diversity of Islamic worldviews and practices in contemporary Turkey, which undermines the notion of a homogenous Turkish Islam.

This analysis has several further implications for the study of Turkish nationalism and secularism. First, Turkey's use of Islam to cultivate military patriotism challenges modernist accounts of nationalism that portray a stark dichotomy between a premodern tradition and a modern secular present. As we have seen, Islam and nationalism are not necessarily in opposition; in the context of Turkish militarism, the two closely intersect. This intersection is not simply a spontaneous or unintended historical development; rather, it has been consciously cultivated by a secular nation-state to generate a pious and patriotic national defense force and citizenry. Selectively appropriating the prerepublican religious traditions inherited from the Ottoman era, the Turkish government rechanneled them in the service of secular nationalism. As such, Turkish nationalism appears to be a complex ideological formation that includes secular as well as religious imaginings that complement and compete with each other.

Second, the analysis of the Islamic legitimization of military service supports the view that the portrayal of Turkish secularism as an aggressive elimination of religion from the public sphere must be qualified. The military's extensive use of Islamic discourses shows that Turkey has a pragmatic and contingent approach to the role of religion in public life. While the Turkish state allows, even promotes, particular Islamic values and norms that foster national interests and state prerogatives (as in the case of military service), it prohibits others that it views as detrimental to them (such as shariʿa law). Turkish secularism should thus be treated not as a robust elimination of religion from the public sphere, but rather as a sovereign modality of power that persistently regulates religion and religious subjectivities to make them compatible with the interests of the secular nation-state.Footnote 93

Third, the development of an Islamist conscientious objection movement in Turkey, which makes systematic and extensive use of Islam to criticize military values, illustrates the challenges faced by authoritarian projects to regulate religious meaning and valuation. Turkey has cultivated a nationalist interpretation of Islam through a robust program of sociopolitical transformation. While this project seems to have been largely successful—as demonstrated by the prevalence of this nationalist interpretation in statist and popular discourses—Islamist COs’ oppositional interpretations and practices show that religious traditions are too rich and dynamic to be mastered completely by state power. Groups that are marginal to the dominant religious discourses may still generate creative and powerful critiques and opposition. The possibilities for such critiques and opposition are more extensive in democratic states where there is relative religious freedom. The critical discourse and resistance of Turkey's Islamist COs suggest that grand political projects to discipline religious imaginaries and put them to the service of the modern state always remain incomplete.

Footnotes

Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.

References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Susan Buck-Morss, Isaac Kramnick, Jason Frank, Richard Bensel, Matthew Evangelista, Peter Katzenstein, Thomas Pepinsky, Simon Gilhooley, and the anonymous IJMES reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

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16 Hereafter referred to as the “Directorate.”

17 Davison, “Turkey, a ‘Secular’ State?” 337–38.

18 Mardin, ‘‘Religion in Modern Turkey,’’ International Social Journal 29 (1977): 287.

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21 Participation in the Ottoman army was the prerogative of the Muslim millet. See Zürcher, Erik-Jan, “The Ottoman Conscription System in Theory and Practice, 1844–1918,” International Review of Social History 43 (1998): 447–49Google Scholar.

22 For instance, nationalists “capitalized on rural Muslims’ feelings of revulsion against the Greeks.” Mardin, Şerif, Religion, Society, and Modernity in Turkey (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2006), 233Google Scholar.

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26 Akseki, Askere, 222.

27 Ibid., 209.

28 The literature on these theoretical dilemmas is vast. See, for instance, Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions, ed. John Kelsay and James Turner (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991); and Peters, Ruldolf, Jihad in Classical and Modern Islam: A Reader (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

29 Akseki, Askere, 210.

30 Ibid., 209.

31 Ibid., 300.

32 Ibid., 173.

33 In its response to the insurgency, the state made xenophobic claims, including one that insurgents are non-Muslims—Armenians or Zoroastrians who plot against national unity, and against whom Turkish and Kurdish Muslims are obligated to fight. The current speaker of the Turkish parliament, Cemil Çiçek, commented in 2010 that “there is close collaboration between Armenian terrorism and the terrorism of the PKK. The fact that some terrorists are not circumcized says volumes.” “Bazı PKK’lılar sünnetsiz,” Milliyet, 21 August 2010, accessed 20 January 2014, http://www.milliyet.com.tr/-bazi-pkk-lilar-sunnetsiz-/guncel/haberdetay/21.08.2010/1279153/default.htm. Prime Minister Erdoğan further argued that Kurdish insurgents are Zoroastrians. “Erdoğan: Bu teröristlerin yeri belli, bunlar Zerdüşt,” T24, 20 October 2012, accessed 30 January 2014, http://t24.com.tr/haber/Erdoğan-teroru-kardeslik-ruhuyla-dayanisma-halinde-asacagiz/215650.

34 Cizre Sakallioglu, “Parameters and Strategies,” 246–47.

35 This phrase can also be translated as “Intellectuals’ Hearth.”

36 See Guvenc, Bozkurt et al, Turk-Islam Sentezi (Istanbul: Sarmal Yayınevi, 1991)Google Scholar.

37 See Sam Kaplan, “Religious Nationalism.”

38 Kaplan, “Din-u Devlet,” 120.

39 Ibid., 120.

40 Ibid., 122.

41 Ibid., 121–22.

42 Erbakan is the founder of political Islam in Turkey. He established “three Islamic parties that attempted to keep abreast of dissolution by court decrees, the National Order (est. 1970), National Salvation (est. 1972) and the Welfare (Refah) Party (1983–98).” The goal of these parties was “capturing the state and using it to bring about changes in society by adopting the centralism of the Republic. The subsequently formed ‘Islamic’ parties, Virtue (1997–2001), Felicity (2001–) and AKP, have abandoned this stance and adopted a position much more synchronized with the world economy and liberalism—a change which has often been stated to have proceeded since the 1990s.” Mardin, Serif, “Turkish Islamic Exceptionalism Yesterday and Today: Continuity, Rupture and Reconstruction in Operational Codes,” Turkish Studies 6 (2005): 158–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Almost all of the Ergenekon suspects were released in March 2014. See “Ergenekon Suspects Released Amid Chaos over Legal Authority between Courts,” Hurriyet Daily News, 10 March 2014, accessed 24 April 2014, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ergenekon-suspects-released-amid-chaos-over-legal-authority-between-courts.aspx?PageID=238&NID=63385&NewsCatID=338.

44 See Gareth H. Jenkins, “Between Fact and Fantasy: Turkey's Ergenekon Investigation,” Silk Road Paper, August 2009, accessed 15 March 2014, http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/docs/silkroadpapers/0908Ergenekon.pdf. For a focus on the consequences of the trials for Turkish democracy, see Yaprak Gürsoy, “Turkish Public Attitudes Toward the Military and Ergenekon: Consequences for the Consolidation of Democracy,” Working Paper No. 5 EU/5/2012, İstanbul Bilgi Üniversity, accessed 31 January 2014, http://eu.bilgi.edu.tr/images/pictures/working_paper_5.pdf.

45 The brutal police attack in Gezi Park on a small group of nonviolent activists who were protesting the plan to demolish the park led to nationwide antigovernment protests. Throughout the summer, the police used excessive violence against protestors. Five people were killed and thousands were injured. See Aslı Iğsız, “Brand Turkey and the Gezi Protests: Authoritarianism, Law, and Neoliberalism,” Jadaliyya, 12 July 2013, accessed 31 January 2014, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12907/brand-turkey-and-the-gezi-protests_authoritarianis; and Amnesty International Report, “Turkey Accused of Gross Human Rights Violations in Gezi Park Protests,” 2 October 2013, accessed 30 January 2014, http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/turkey-accused-gross-human-rights-violations-gezi-park-protests-2013-10-02.

46 The first countries to recognize conscientious objection after World War I were Protestant countries in Northern Europe: Norway, Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands, and Finland. The number grew significantly after World War II, expanding to Western Europe and North America. The UN recognized conscientious objection as a human right in 1983. Today, among the forty-seven members of the Council of Europe, Turkey is the only country, along with Azerbaijan, not to recognize conscientious objection. However, within the Middle East, Turkey is far from unique. Neither the Muslim-majority countries nor Israel recognize conscientious objection. See Brock, Peter, Freedom from Violence: Sectarian Nonresistance from the Middle Ages to the Great War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991)Google Scholar; War Resisters’ International Reports, “General Panorama of Conscientious Objection in the World”; and War Resisters’ International, 1 July 2006, accessed 7 February 2014, http://wri-irg.org/news/2006/bogota06-worldco-en.htm.

47 “Başbakan Erdoğan’dan vicdani ret açıklaması,” Hurriyet, 22 November 2011, accessed 30 January 2014, http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/19303120.asp.

48 However, the AKP's discourse with respect to the peace process launched in 2013 seems to diverge from this trend. In its talks with the PKK, the government has deployed notions of religious unity and Muslim brotherhood. Although it remains to be seen what the final outcome of these talks will be and whether the government will continue to use such discourse, this development is still important.

49 In a recent study conducted by İstanbul Bilgi Üniversity, Bilkent University, and KONDA Research and Consultancy, 81.8 percent of participants supported conscription. Two out of every three opposed paid military service. “Bilmedikleri ‘vicdani ret’e karşılar,” Radikal, 25 November 2011, accessed 30 January 2013, http://www.ntvmsnbc.com/id/25300286. See also Sarigil, Zeki, “Deconstructing the Turkish Military's Popularity,” Armed Forces & Society 35 (2008): 709–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 This contrasts with the CO movements in Europe and North America. With their origins in Christian pacifism, these movements evolved to include ethical and political refusals of the draft after World War I. Charles C. Moskos and John W. Chambers II emphasize that although religious conscientious objection continues to exist in Europe and North America, it has declined in proportion to the dynamic growth of secular conscientious objection, a phenomenon they call “the secularization of conscience.” Moskos, Charles C. and Chambers II, John Whiteclay, eds., The New Conscientious Objection: From Sacred to Secular Resistance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993)Google Scholar. In Turkey, by contrast, conscientious objection emerged as a secular anarchist movement, and only recently came to include religious groups. A similar case is Israel, another Middle Eastern country with a strong military tradition. Israel's CO movement also emerged out of the left, opposing the obligation to serve in the Occupied Territories after the 1982 Lebanon war. However, following the recent ban on exemptions from military service for yeshiva students, ultra-orthodox Jews have begun to demand the recognition of conscientious objection. Moreover, a new class of religious COs has emerged supporting the occupation and refusing to comply with military orders such as the evacuation of illegal Jewish settlements. See Helman, Sara, “Negotiating Obligations, Creating Rights: Conscientious Objection and the Redefinition of Citizenship in Israel,” Citizenship Studies 3 (1999): 45–70Google Scholar; and Eyal Press, “Israel's Holy Warriors,” The New York Review of Books, 31 March 2010, accessed 4 February 2014, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/29/israels-holy-warriors/?pagination=false.

51 Başkent, Vicdani Ret, 13. Vedat Zencir declared his conscientious objection in a joint declaration with Tayfun Gönül, who passed away in 2012.

52 Under the initiative of antimilitarist activists including the late Tayfun Gönül, Vedat Zencir, and Osman Murat Ülke, Turkey's first War Resisters’ Association (Savaş Karşıtları Derneği; SDK) was founded in Izmir in 1992. When SDK was closed down in 1993 by the governor's office, a new organization, Izmir War Resisters’ Association (Izmir Savaş Karşıtları Derneğ; ISKD) replaced it. ISKD headed the movement throughout the 1990s, although a branch split off in Istanbul under the name War Resisters’ Association. In 2000, both organizations were shut down. In response, a web-based discussion group and an antimilitarist website (Savaskarsitlari Yahoo Group and http://www.savaskarsitlari.org, respectively) were established. The center of antimilitarist activism later became the Platform of Conscientious Objection for Peace, which recently formed the Conscientious Objection Association in Istanbul. See Çınar, Özgür Heval and Üsterci, Coşkun, eds., Conscientious Objection: Resisting Militarized Society (New York: Zed Books, 2009)Google Scholar.

53 Kurdish COs formed an independent platform in 2010 called the Kürt Vicdanî Ret İnisiyatifi (Kurdish Conscientious Objection Initiative). The Initiative organizes periodic collective CO declarations. The antimilitarist website www.savaskarsitlari.org reports the current number of Kurdish COs as approximately 257. The identity of all Kurdish COs is not known, for significant numbers of them choose to remain anonymous. In such cases, a representative of the Initiative announces the number of new Kurdish COs and makes a single declaration on their behalf. The Initiative is not an antimilitarist organization and it supports the PKK's use of violence in its national independence struggle. This support distinguishes the Initiative and its Kurdish CO members from Kurdish citizens who have declared their conscientious objection but oppose both Turkish and Kurdish militarism, such as the prominent Kurdish CO and peace activist Halil Savda. As Savda has suggested, this disagreement precludes the formation of a coalition between the Initiative and the broader CO movement represented by the Conscientious Objection Association. Author's interviews and conversations with Halil Savda, December 2012 and summer 2013. For more on the political stance of the Initiative, see the interview with its spokesperson, Ahmet Demirsoy: Atalay Gocek, “Muazzam Bir Gelisme,” Biamag, 14 May 2011, accessed 1 February 2014, http://www.bianet.org/biamag/ifade-ozgurlugu/129978-muazzam-bir-gelisme.

54 See Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

55 There has recently been an important development in this regard. In February 2012, a Jehovah's Witness by the name of Barış Görmez, who had spent four years in prison for his conscientious objection stance, was acquitted by a Turkish military court on account of the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) use of Article 9 in its 2011 Bayatyan v Armenia ruling. The court thus accepted Görmez's right to conscientious objection based on his pacifist religious beliefs. Interestingly, another Turkish court, ruling on the Islamist conscientious objection of Muhammed Serdar Delice in March 2012, denied the applicability of Article 9 to the case by claiming that Islam is not compatible with pacifist acts. Despite a sympathetic ruling from an individual court, there has been no legislation concerning CO rights. See Ekin Karaca, “Yehova Sahidine Vicdani Ret Hakki,” Bianet, 13 March 2012, accessed 31 January 2014, http://www.bianet.org/bianet/bianet/136899-yehova-sahidi-ne-vicdani-ret-hakki; and Mine Yildirim, “TURKEY: Selective progress on conscientious objection,” Forum 18 News Service, 1 May 2012, accessed 30 January 2014, http://www.forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=1696.

56 War Resisters’ International, “The Current Situation In Turkey,” accessed 3 April 2013, http://www.wri-irg.org/node/20810.

57 Council of Europe, “Report by Thomas Hammarberg, Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Following His Visit to Turkey, from 27 to 29 April 2011: Freedom of Expression and Media Freedom in Turkey,” accessed 20 March 1913, https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?id=1814085.

58 Amnesty International, “Turkey: Conscientious Objector at Risk of Imprisonment,” accessed 10 January 2013, http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/turkey-conscientious-objector-risk-imprisonment-20071003.

59 Before Aydemir, other COs, including Halil Savda and Mehmet Bal, were given similar medical reports, rendering their opposition pathological. See Amnesty International, “Turkey: Conscientious Objection is a Human Right Not a Personality Disorder,” accessed 10 March 2013, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/EUR44/013/2010.

60 War Resisters’ International, “Human Rights Committee Highlights Conscientious Objection in Turkey,” accessed 28 March 2013, http://www.wri-irg.org/node/20816.

61 The ECHR has characterized the “clandestine” lifestyle imposed on them as “civil death.” War Resisters’ International, “European Court of Human Rights Rules in Case of Turkish Conscientious Objector,” accessed 2 February 2014, http://wri-irg.org/node/806/.

62 For military regulations concerning the conscription of gays, see Alp Biricik, “Rotten Report and Reconstructing Hegemonic Masculinity in Turkey,” in Conscientious Objection, ed. Çınar and Üsterci, 112–21.

63 Enver Aydemir, author's interview, 3 July 2011. All translations into English are mine.

64 “Enver Aydemir’in Mahkemedeki Savunması (Aydemir's Written Defense),” Enver Aydemir Vicdanımızdır, accessed 29 March 2013, http://enveraydemirinisiyatifi.blogspot.com/2010/06/enver-aydemirin-mahkemedeki-savunmasi.html.

65 For an analysis of Turkish radical Islam, see Çakır, Ruşen, Ayet ve Slogan (Istanbul: Metis Yayincilik, 2002)Google Scholar; and Derin Hizbullah (Istanbul: Metis Yayinlari, 2001).

66 Enver Aydemir, author's interview, 3 July 2011.

67 There may, of course, be “hidden” draft evaders who are radical Islamists. The strategies available for hidden evaders include postponing recruitment by enrolling in institutions of higher education or obtaining medical reports indicating ineligibility for military service.

68 Also known as Cemaat (Community) and Hizmet (Service), the Gülen movement was founded by the Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, who currently resides in the United States. With its mass network of schools in Turkey and the Balkans, Central Asia, Europe, and North America, Gülen has become one of the most influential Islamic transnational movements in recent decades. Gülen's followers have established newspapers such as Zaman, television stations such as Samanyolu TV, and magazines and academic journals. They are known to be strong within the police force and the judiciary. Until recently, the movement had close relations with the AKP. In fact, its “penetration of the police and the judiciary allowed Erdoğan to confront the military and other key obstacles to the enlargement of his power” (Claire Berlinski, “Anatomy of a Power Struggle,” American Foreign Policy Council, accessed 1 February 2014, http://www.afpc.org/publication_listings/viewArticle/1792). Relations began to falter when prosecutors affiliated with the movement went after Hakan Fidan, the head of Turkish intelligence, due to his criticisms of Israel and of peace negotiations with the Kurdish movement. Erdoğan responded by threatening to close Gülen's after-school education network (dershane). The controversy culminated in a massive corruption investigation launched on 17 December 2013 implicating government officials, including the sons of three ministers and hundreds of businessmen and others close to the government. Erdoğan blamed Gülen and its followers in the judiciary for operating as a “parallel state” and attempting to stage a coup against him. He got rid of thousands within the police force suspected of being Gülenist and reassigned new prosecutors to the investigation in order to block it. Gülen denies the accusations, but he sharply criticized the government. For the corruption scandal, see Tim Arango, “Corruption Scandal Is Edging Near Turkish Premier,” New York Times, 26 December 2013, accessed 1 February 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/26/world/europe/turkish-cabinet-members-resign.html.

69 Ali Bulac, “Bedelliye ve Vicdani Red’de Red,” Zaman, 21 November 2011, accessed 31 December 2014, http://www.zaman.com.tr/yazar.do;jsessionid=D6F0595A67A41F7E6DA39483EA23B540?yazino=1204427.

70 Hayrettin Karaman, “Reddedilen Askerlik mi Vicdan Mı?,” Yeni Safak, 8 December 2011, http://yenisafak.com.tr/Yazarlar/?i=30097&y=HayrettinKaraman.; Hayrettin Karaman, “Red Vicdandan mı?” Yeni Safak, 9 December 2011, accessed 31 December 2013, http://yenisafak.com.tr/Yazarlar/?t=09.12.2011&y=HayrettinKaraman.

71 Abdullah Kibritci, “Vicdani Ret Sapikligi, Vicdansiz Elit Aktivistler ve Devlet Hakkinda,” Populist Kultur, 6 January 2012, accessed 15 May 2013, http://www.populistkultur.com/vicdani-ret-vicdansiz-elit-aktivist-devlet/.

72 İhsan Eliaçık, author's interview, 10 January 2012. Eliaçık's books include Adalet Devleti (Istanbul: Insa Yayinlari, 2011) and Sosyal Islam (Istanbul: Insa Yayinlari, 2011).

73 Among Middle Eastern and Muslim-majority countries, Turkey was the first to have an Islamist conscientious objection movement. In the Middle East, COs emerged in Egypt only in 2012 when two Egyptians grounded their refusal to serve in the army on secular political convictions. See “Egypt: New Conscientious Objectors,” War Resisters’ International, 1 May 2012, accessed 7 February 2014, http://www.wri-irg.org/node/15116.

74 Enver Aydemir, author's interview, 3 July 2011.

75 Muhammed Serdar Delice, author's interview, 2 July 2011. Delice did not cite a specific source for this interpretation of jihad. For a description of the distinctions between the two forms of jihad, see The Message of the Qurʾan, trans. Muhammad Asad (Gibraltar: Dar al-Andalus, 1980). All further references to and quotations from the Qurʾan are from Muhammad Asad's translation. Each of the 114 sections of the Qurʾan is called a sura. Each sura has a different number of ayas, or verses. In quotations, the number of the sura is followed by the number of the ayas, as in 1:14.

76 Similar to the Kurdish CO Initiative, Islamist COs oppose pacifism, which would indicate a refusal of the Islamic obligation of “minor jihad.”

77 Muhammed Serdar Delice, author's interview, 2 July 2011.

78 Yusuf A., author's interview, 5 January 2012.

79 Nilay Vardar, “Muhammed’i Serbest Bırakın,” Bianet, 12 September 2011, accessed 20 January 2014, http://bianet.org/bianet/ifade-ozgurlugu/132655-muhammed-i-serbest-birakin.

80 Saatçioğlu, author's interview, December 2013.

81 Ibid.

82 Mehmet Lütfü Özdemir, author's interview, 27 December 2011.

83 Enver Aydemir, author's interview, 3 July 2011.

84 Mehmet Lütfü Özdemir, author's interview, 27 December 2011.

85 Muhammed Serdar Delice, author's interview, 2 July 2011.

86 Inan Mayis Aru, author's interview, 5 July 2011.

87 The reference is to the Battle of Karbala, which took place on the 10th of the first month of the Islamic calendar, Moharram, in the year 61 hijra (10 October 680). The Battle took place in Karbala, located in present-day Iraq. Muhammad's grandson Husayn ibn Ali was martyred in the Battle.

88 Inan Mayis Aru, author's interview, 5 July 2011.

89 Arı, author's interviews, June 2012 and July 2013. While there are currently only four women Islamist COs, there are approximately fifty women COs within the broader CO movement.

90 Inan Mayis Aru, author's interview, 5 July 2011.

91 Shirk means the ascription of divine qualities to others beside God. Asad, The Message, 113.

92 Mehmet Lütfü Özdemir, author's interview, 27 December 2011.

93 For this approach to secularism, see Asad, Talal, “Trying to Understand French Secularism,” in Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, ed. de Vries, Hent and Sullivan, Lawrence E. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 494–526CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Agrama, Hussein A., “Secularism, Sovereignty, Indeterminacy: Is Egypt a Secular or a Religious State?” Comparative Studies in Society and History 52 (2010): 495–523CrossRefGoogle Scholar.