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This paper seeks to bridge the gap between theoretical discussions on secularism and institutional assessments of the role of religion in the public sphere. To this end it first delves into the different roles attributed to religion in the writings of Joh ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defining religious parties as either moderate or extreme thwarts our attempts to understand their transformation in electoral competitions.I use the case of JDP to illustrate why moderation needs to be seen as a multi-dimensional process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does their ascendancy undermine democracy in their respective countries and the expansion of liberal democracy in the world? Is electoral competition a cure for the radicalism of religious parties? Does their participation in electoral competition moderate their political views or induce them to adopt more extremist positions? The point of departure in our analysis is the argument that treating religious parties as homogeneous and moderation as a dichotomous position or an automatic process (or impossibility for a party) only thwarts our attempts to understand the interface of religious parties and democracy. The parties that are often subsumed under the label “religious parties” span a broad ideological spectrum. Likewise, “moderation” does not easily lend itself to a single definition and, unless consistently defined and applied, risks yielding contradictory and misleading results. Against this conceptual background this paper compares and contrasts the trasfomation of six religious political parties in Israel and Turkey after their inclusion in competitive elections. Our comparative findings enable us to offer an inductive model of moderation that transcends the pigeon-holed conclusions that are based on the analyses of idiosyncratic cases or large N studies that fail to capture critical differences across religious parties and their contexts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many have described Turkey?s Justice and Development Party as the first Islamic Democratic party in Muslim world. This paper questions whether and how the JDP is a model Islamic democratic party using my 127 in-depth interviews with JDP leaders [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Turkey’s Islamist parties are under scrutiny of the secularist elite and the military, which regard Islam as a destabilizing and anti-modernist force, they have steadily increased their electoral appeal since the end of the Cold War. In the recent elections held on November 3, 2002, a brand new Islamist party, the Justice and Development Party (JDP), achieved a stunning success by capturing 34.31 percent of total votes. This paper argues that the JDP’s electoral victory offers a unique case to analyze (i) the reasons for the growing popularity of religious parties and (ii) how the inclusion of religious parties into a competitive electoral process promotes or hinders democracy. A review of the extant literature on religious parties’ expansion of their popular support in general and the JDP in particular reveals that their explanations can be assigned to three approaches: (i) religious parties emerge as a reaction to secularist values (conflict approach); (ii) religious parties’ popularity capitalizes on ongoing socio-economic crises (crisis approach); (iii) religious parties gain political power as anti-systemic parties (political alienation approach). Drawing upon the analysis of a national representative survey with 1000 Turkish citizens, conducted in October 2003 and a set of interviews with the JDP leadership, this paper tackles two interrelated questions: (i) to what extent the prevailing conflict, crisis and political alienation approaches to religious party support can be substantiated; and (ii) whether and how the growing religious party support translates into the consolidation of liberal democracy. Understanding the Turkey’s JDP enables us to address a set of broader questions: How does Islamist parties’ cooptation with or acceptance of the electoral rules transform the political views of Islamist partisans? Do we observe a unique interpretation of Islam by Islamist partisans when Islamist parties are accepted in electoral competition? Does the incorporation of Islamist parties into competitive electoral system moderate their political positions? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls into question the prevailing explanations that consider religious parties as reactionary temporary movements; Jewish and Islamic political movements as “incommensurable,” and the Middle East as an “exceptional region.” It argues that the parallel rise of religious parties in Israeli and Turkish politics offers a rich ground for a comparative analysis of these parties growing appeal. Competing political agendas of Israel’s Mafdal and Shas party and Turkey’s National Action, Prosperity and Justice and Development Parties and how these parties approach to the secular state are foci of its analysis. The arguments presented draw on a set of interviews with these parties’ leadership and their various statements. The findings show that religious parties differ significantly within Israel and Turkey as they accommodate the secular nation state through distinctive uses of their respective religious symbols while they reveal similar ideological positions across the countries. Both Israel’s and Turkey’s religious parties do not simply reject or support their respective secularist nationalisms. On the contrary, they reconcile polarizing positions attributed to the religious and secular through two different processes: sacralization and internal secularization. An assessment of religious parties’ agendas by identifying the dominant process by which they appropriate the secular nationalism allows us to reassess their position vis-à-vis liberal democracy. So-called moderate religious parties are more likely to sacralize the nation-state therefore more likely to challenge liberal democracies. Whereas ostensibly more radical parties seem to transform religious symbols from within thereby enabling them to accommodate the countervailing demands. Despite their capacity to challenge secular nationalism and expand the boundaries of political discourse none of the religious parties emerges as a religious liberal alternative to authoritarian secular nationalist ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]