Kemalism in More than One Country? Religious Jacobinism in Turkey and Tunisia.

This paper examines the religious policies of two Muslim-majority republics usually described as 'secular,' and argues that they can best be understood within the twin traditions of Muslim nationalism and Jacobinism. Secularism here in no way implies separation of religion(s) and state, but conversely the promotion of a civic religion in Rousseau's sense, built around Sunni Islam. A reinterpretation of these projects in these terms suggests the need to reconsider ideas of the diffusion of 'secularism' from Europe to later-developing states and has implications for projects of forced socio-political transformation such as that underway in Iraq. Despite the radical breach represented by the transition from empire to republic, from Caliphate to 'laïc' state, the religious politics of the early Turkish Republic under Kemal (Ataturk) were significantly influenced by the Sunni Muslim nationalism of the later Ottoman Empire (see, for example, Kemal Karpat, The politicization of Islam: reconstructing identity, state, faith, and community in the late Ottoman state. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 409 et seq). At the same time the Kemalist project drew on the Jacobin tradition of revolutionary and Third Republic France in a project of centralizing control and constructed homogeneity, both ethnic and religious, through legal, bureaucratic, and ideological means. The project labeled itself ‘secular,’ but was more properly Erastian: the construction of a national, republican civil religion based on the existing religion of the majority, but reformed to be compatible with the requirements of the modernizing state, an application of the Jacobin interpretation of Rousseau's ideas. To what extent do these ‘secular’ republics reproduce the Jacobin model of bureaucratization, nationalization, and constructed homogenization of identity? This paper examines the religious policies of two post-Ottoman republics, Turkey and Tunisia. What evidence is there to support the idea that we should most usefully consider these examples of Muslim Erastian states? Is their 'secularism' constructed, like the laïcité of the French Third Republic (at least down to 1905) on the basis of a constructed civic religion? Evidence is derived from a careful comparative interpretation of 1) constitutional documents, 2) elite discourse, and 2) national education curricula, including official textbooks. The implications extend beyond the Islamic world, although it is most critical to understand the meaning and processes of political secularization in those countries where the 'clash of civilizations' is most starkly informing the interactions of the West and the rest. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]