The International in Turkish Islamist Thought

Dogmatic Grounds: Pan-Islamism as a Religious Precept

It comes as no surprise that Turkish Islamists find a fundamental ground for Pan-Islamism in the fundamentals of religion, namely the Quran and the Sunnah. This reverberates a grand tendency in the Islamist ideology, that is, ‘the return to the sources.’ In this account, the ‘sources’ are subjected to re-interpretation in search for ‘the revival of pure Islam,’ ²⁸ and therefore, this-worldly and after-worldly salvation. In making unity ‘a part of the essence of Islam,’ ²⁹ Turkish Islamists recruit Pan-Islamism from a bunch of Quranic verses and hadiths. ³⁰ For instance, citing a group of verses, a well-known theologian, Hayreddin Karaman, concludes that Muslims have to side with their coreligionists in international relations, they are ‘religiously responsible to form a union, bloc, or economic, political and military camp,’ and any cooperation with non-Muslims is allowed on the basis of necessity and only until the foundation of the Muslim union. ³¹

A series of theological and jurisprudential arguments also accompanies the references to those verses and hadiths. Above all, the overarching Islamic principle of tevhid (oneness of God) is extrapolated to society in an attempt to ‘become one in one God and one religion.’ This attempt advocates that ‘the concept of the umma is a requirement of the belief of tevhid.’ ³² A deviation from this unity of the umma is even understood as ‘social polytheism’ similar to ‘religious polytheism.’ ³³ A prestigious ideologue, Sezai Karakoç, concludes that ‘unless Muslims as a whole unite and constitute a power basis, it will be difficult to sustain the principle of oneness of God, which is the fundamental principle and lifeblood of Islam.’ ³⁴ Furthermore, the essence of the institution of caliphate is also found in ‘the unity of the umma and the political and legal representation of this unity.’ ³⁵ This is to say that the caliphate is important not on its own, but for its institutionalisation and as a symbol of ‘the spiritual and political unity of the umma.’ ³⁶ The ontological and theological priority of the Muslim unity renders many other subjects secondary.

In their interpretation of Islamic sources, Islam draws group boundaries for both Muslims and non-Muslims as the prime source of identity. The diacritical markers of the Muslim identity revolve around a set of divine sources, including common God, Prophet, book, and worship. As Islam ascribes a religious identity to all Muslims through the Islamic faith, the assertion of this ascribed identity in each and every domain of life, including the international arena, is religiously sanctioned, to be realised in common action. ‘The return to the sources’ finds its solution in Muslims having the obligation to follow the divine instructions not to be divided and weakened. Therefore, one can easily come across such arguments that ‘acting as an umma is not optional but is a religious duty,’ ³⁷ or ‘its brotherhood is not allowed to be constrained by anything, including race, color and geography, but faith.’ ³⁸

All in all, this explanation of Pan-Islamism relates much to a conception of international relations on the basis of diverging identities, which stem from religion itself. In so doing, Turkish Islamists claim to find an explicit theory of international relations in their own religion. Furthermore, when interpreted in this way, Pan-Islamism turns into an end itself, instead of a means. In this sense, ‘Pan-Islamists present no less an almost mystical doctrine of monism, approximating a political translation of the Sufi master Ibn Arabi’s (d. 1240) mystical vision known as wahdat al-wujud, ‘unity of being’.’ ³⁹ As the unity of faith is translated into the unity of fate through the reification of belief and the umma, Pan-Islamism seems to be an authentic imagination of socio-political organisation. However, it would be plausible to argue that they seem to know too well what to find in the sources before they even return to them, as the next sections will demonstrate.

Historical Grounds: Pan-Islamism as a Historical Fact and Lesson

The why of Pan-Islamism is also found in history, making it an issue of collective memory beyond dogmatic obligations. In this account, the unity of Muslims is imagined as a ‘historical fact.’ ⁴⁰ As ‘those several races and ethnicities of different geographies, histories, cultures and economic conditions formed the great Islamic union by locking on to the principle that ‘Muslims are brothers’,’ ⁴¹ Pan-Islamism as a dogmatic obligation was realised in history as a political project, a spiritual connection fed by centuries. Accordingly, there emerges a society whose members are religiously and historically connected to each other. ⁴² Muslim countries have to be sided with each other as ‘it is an objective reality determined by history.’ ⁴³

In this sense, the Ottoman era is often presented as a prime manifestation of this reality of historical ‘ummaness.’ The Ottoman Empire is typically considered as ‘a society of umma’ and the golden age of Islam, superseded only by the age of the Prophet and his companions. It concludes that ‘when Muslims relied on Pan-Islamism, they dominated the world and lived with honor and dignity.’ ⁴⁴ As its collapse is regarded as the dissolution of the umma structure and consciousness, this breakup is perceived to be a ‘forced one,’ distorting the natural course of history. That said, the Ottoman era remains an inspiration for the prospective umma, ⁴⁵ and the gap left by the Ottomans is to be filled by the revival of the Ottoman civilisation. ⁴⁶

In any case, apart from dogmatic teachings, a supposedly common history becomes an important source of identity for Muslims. As ‘the common historical bonds have always been a given,’ ⁴⁷ history defines the essence and character of societies. In fact, the Turkish Islamist civilisationism superimposes history as a prime ground of Pan-Islamism. For example, a prime ideologue of civilisationism, Ahmet Davutoğlu, identifies in 1994 ‘a cultural-historical identity arising on a civilisational axis in historical process’ as the main determinant of identity. ⁴⁸ Discussions of this kind conclude more than often with the obligation of appropriating this civilisational heritage. ⁴⁹

As Pan-Islamism represents the historical authenticity, disunity is understood as an accident at best and a deviation or an unfortunate subordination of the Muslim world to the ‘Western conspiracy’ at worst, with its shattering impact on the natural order of the reality imposed by history. It becomes much more imperative considering that Muslims have also shared the same historical line in the face of imperialism. ⁵⁰ In the final analysis, history also teaches us the dangers of dividedness and advises unity even in objective terms. ⁵¹ It seems like a law of socio-political world, equating dividedness with weakness, and, unity with strength. In this sense, the ‘danger’ is measured in power-politics terms with a particular emphasis on survival because tefrika (dividedness) debilitates the ‘Muslim world’ in every aspect, yearning for its perceived golden age and former dignity.

Thus, historical authenticity becomes a fundamental ground to change the international. History does not run its course under the current conditions of international relations, which are considered as unnatural/artificial and temporary. The course of history becomes, in this way, a means for contestation. In so doing, what Gregorio Bettiza and David Lewis calls ‘civilizational essentialization’ allows Turkish Islamists to create ‘a stable identity and sense of self’ with ‘a sense of agency’ as well as to escape the imperatives of the international order with their own ‘particularistic notions of moral and political selves.’ ⁵²

Conjunctural Grounds: Pan-Islamism as an Imperative of Our Age

The recent history of international relations strongly shapes the Turkish Islamist effort to ground Pan-Islamism in a way that rationalises it through their empirical observations on world politics. Accordingly, God seems to not assign the impossible/irrational/illegitimate to Muslims, but rather what is divinely attributed to Muslims becomes part of what has already been operative in the world.

In the first place, the Turkish Islamist texts seem to internalise and naturalise Cold War politics, repeating a balance of power logic in international relations. This is why they coin the terms ‘Muslim bloc,’ ⁵³ ‘Muslim pact’ ⁵⁴ and ‘the fourth world,’ ⁵⁵ inspired from the blocs and pacts of the Cold War, as a new balancing camp and a corollary of world politics. In this account, the age is understood as a time of unity throughout the world, and power and survival are found in alliances and blocs. For example, a respected figure of Turkish Islamism, Nuri Pakdil, writes during the heyday of the Cold War that ‘the post-Second World War condition . . . has obliged the unity of countries,’ and therefore, ‘it is now the age of pacts.’ ⁵⁶ During those days, the editorial of an important journal, Hilâl, also claims ‘Societies are no longer strong enough to be isolated and struggle alone, and therefore, they have been attempting to form blocs composed of people of affinity.’ ⁵⁷

This reasoning remains considerably intact in the immediate context of the post-Cold War years as well, with their arguments that ‘States have well understood that they cannot single-handedly solve their problems anymore’ ⁵⁸ or that ‘Multi-national, multi-religious, multi-cultural states have been now replacing mono-cultural, mono-religious, mono-national states’. ⁵⁹ Motivated mainly by the robustness of NATO and the consolidation of the EU and informed substantially by the themes of regionalisation, globalisation and the crisis of the nation-state, Turkish Islamists continue to underline the cooperative and balancing relations in the post-Cold War context as an explanation, excuse or rationalisation for their prospective Muslim unity/union. Several Turkish Islamists state that ‘as international conjuncture tends toward regionalisation in parallel with globalization, the issue of the future condition of Muslim basins is on the agenda.’ ⁶⁰ In this account, the EU, for example, is grounded on the weakness of the nation-state in an emerging ‘age of loose empires.’ ⁶¹ In a similar vein, as it is perceived a highly efficient tool to realise common interests, ⁶² the major importance of regionalisation lies in its capacity to elevate countries from ‘regional powers’ to ‘great powers’ through changing the distribution of power as exemplified by the EU. ⁶³

Turning realpolitik into some sort of this idealpolitik and God’s ultimate will, ⁶⁴ Turkish Islamists make the Muslim unity inevitable and natural through a considerably secular reasoning. In so doing, they often refer to a politics of balancing. Thus, they seem to present a kind of ‘norm adoption’ rather than a ‘norm contestation,’ hence rendering the Turkish Islamist proposal mainly a change in the international rather than a change of the international. As Turkish Islamists seem to be charmed by the developments and actors of contemporary world politics, it is equally important that this effort makes the Turkish Islamist proposal much more synthetic than it is imagined in its divine and historical justifications.

Pragmatic/Practical Grounds: Pan-Islamism as an Opportunity

The search for power is a strong ideological component of Turkish Islamism even if it frequently entails a pragmatic and practical reasoning, and at times, contradicts with other important components of its ideology. It also provides the ground for the rationalisation and justification of Pan-Islamism. Pan-Islamism becomes more about ‘power indicators’ than about dogmatic responsibilities, historical consistency or international tendencies, as such, turning into a means to energise the power potential of the ‘Muslim world.’ Accordingly, borrowing from Fawaz A. Gerges, ⁶⁵ it would be plausible to state that this pragmatic/practical reasoning makes the Pan-Islamist challenge to Western perception of international relations more ‘a clash of interests’ than ‘a clash of cultures.’

It is common to mention a set of power indicators: the high number of the Muslim-majority countries, a wide geography from Morocco to Indonesia, the total population of Muslims with a significant number of youth population, the vast arable soils, the rich underground sources, their advantageous position at the centre of important trade routes, the geopolitical centrality, the socio-cultural affinity, and so on. ⁶⁶ In this sense, Pan-Islamism is rationally grounded on its prospective material power as a means to operationalise this potential:

This unity can be a step towards the common market of Muslim countries. It gives birth to a market of nearly one and a half billion, the biggest and strongest in the world. This integrated and self-sufficient market gives direction to the world economy. The Western countries would make great compromises to enter this market. ⁶⁷

Pan-Islamism is also normalised through the assumption of the allegedly existing coherence and harmony of the Muslim-majority countries, which constitute a supposedly monolithic region, on these material grounds. As ‘all interests of Muslim countries, including economic, political, and domestic, are common,’ ⁶⁸ it becomes some sort of pseudo-liberal cooperation or a give-and-take relation based on shared economic and political interests to be realised for the sake of absolute gains of those countries. This is to say that Pan-Islamism is an imperative considering the compatibility, common benefits, harmony of interests and comparative advantages of Muslim countries. The quotation below from 1976 is highly telling of this reasoning:

The unity of world Muslims is no dream. Their economies are mutually complementary. When Turkey’s technical knowledge and staff combine with the Arab capital and the agriculture of other countries and this combination breaks into the already existing markets in Asia and Africa, there will emerge a world Muslim economy that can compete with the dominant economic powers. For its realization, a Muslim common market must be founded in the first place. ⁶⁹

In this sense, Pan-Islamism turns into an ambition to rescue the ‘Muslim world’ from passivity and to be a great, or in fact, super power, which would determine the course of world politics. Muslims must exhibit their united power ‘to make their existence felt and to not be wasted in the global hegemony competitions of the world system.’ ⁷⁰ Sezai Karakoç in the journal Diriliş assumes that ‘only powerful and great powers can now survive in our age,’ and ‘there is no chance of survival for small, tiny states.’ ⁷¹ This reasoning directly compares the ‘Muslim world’ with the existing dominant powers in that ‘if Muslim states followed the orders of the Quran for fraternal unification, then the biggest shareholder in world politics would be neither America, nor Russia, nor China;’ ⁷² or similarly, ‘it is not an exaggeration to claim that it will be the fourth super power alongside America, Europe and Japan.’ ⁷³

In the final analysis, Turkish Islamists perceive the Muslim world as a kind of ‘regional complex,’ to borrow Buzan and Wæver’s concept, ⁷⁴ with their assignment of a common destiny to its members. It is also mostly understood in material terms. However, for Turkish Islamists, power is neither right nor wrong in itself, but ‘it is a morally neutral category, contingent on the political purpose.’ ⁷⁵ This brings us to the emancipatory grounds.

Emancipatory Grounds: Pan-Islamism as Salvation

For Turkish Islamists, the perceived weakness of the Muslim world is contingent on the relationship between the imperialist conduct of international relations and the lack of Muslim unity. Turkish Islamists rely on what Naveed S. Sheikh calls geo-culturalism, ‘a security problematic constructed around cultural identity.’ ⁷⁶ This concludes, for example, that ‘all, including Kashmir, Cyprus, one million Palestinian refugees, and black Muslims in America, are the victims of the same disaster: not being united and awakened.’ ⁷⁷ This diagnosis can be best illustrated in the words of Ahmet Varol, a prominent Turkish Islamist author:

We can say that the problem of dividedness lies at the heart of all the prominent problems of Muslims in this day and age. It is because dividedness prevents the combination of forces, and in this way, prevents their functioning. However, in today’s increasingly globalizing world, combining forces is an imperative. Dividedness stands also in opposition to the umma consciousness. The fundamental reason for dividedness is the colonial imposition of nationalist understandings on Muslims and their fragmentation into small geographical pieces. ⁷⁸

It follows that the treatment of this disease lies purely and simply in Pan-Islamism, as ‘the most vital problem of today’s Muslim world is the re-establishment of the umma consciousness, the umma morality, the umma language, and the umma solidarity.’ ⁷⁹ Among Turkish Islamists, there is a messianic conception of Pan-Islamism: It is to be the only saviour of Muslims as it would destroy the organising principle of international relations, namely imperialism. One can frequently encounter the idea that ‘it is only the upper identity of the umma consciousness or Pan-Islamism that can resist against the pharaohs of the twenty first century.’ ⁸⁰

With the theme of survival at its heart, Pan-Islamism offers a conception of change based on the existence of external enemies and a hostile international structure. As ‘unification is necessary for those who face a common threat,’ ⁸¹ this self-declared ‘defensive’ posture requires Muslim nations to unite in the face of oppression, exploitation, and defeat. As such, Pan-Islamism becomes the final stage of decolonisation, which has never been completed according to the Turkish Islamist understanding. Significantly, this solution closely relates to the mechanisms of power politics and balancing. One can find such arguments as ‘the Muslim world as a third power and a peace factor in the world balance of power,’ ⁸² ‘an Islamic union to be the third balancing bloc in the world,’ ⁸³ and ‘a powerful Muslim bloc as a stronghold against Western exploitation.’ ⁸⁴ Bülent Arınç’s words from 1996 reflect this power-orientation of Turkish Islamists:

A world Muslim union is our fundamental objective. And it is no dream. It will be realized sooner or later . . . Today, there are fifty-six Muslim-majority countries. Their total population is more than one billion. However, they have no voice in the UN. They have no veto power in the Security Council. If the UN does not pay attention to these Muslims, then we found our own UN. This is because power is the only language that the West understands. If we become powerful, the US cannot bomb and place an embargo on wherever it wants. We have to abolish it. ⁸⁵

While generating power to resist imperialism, Turkish Islamists consider this effort as what can be called ‘benign balancing,’ which would eventually lead to a ‘benign hegemony.’ In this sense, the Turkish Islamist moralism largely prevents any philosophical, theoretical or theological reflection on power, but rather rehabilitates and disciplines power through a self-attributed moral superiority. This shortcut of moral benignity is particularly manifested in its civilising mission, which relates much to the normative dimension of international relations. This is to say that its civilising mission does not correspond to a so-called development level in cultural, political, administrative, economic, and technological terms, but rather refers to a higher normative level, which is perceived as lacking in the current praxis of world affairs. In this sense, the unity of Muslims is presented as a ‘service to humanity.’ ⁸⁶ Thus, while offering Pan-Islamism as a peacebuilding force or an international gendarmerie mechanism for the sake of justice in international relations, Turkish Islamists question the institutions of sovereignty and non-intervention only so far as the liberal institutions of humanitarian intervention and responsibility to protect do. ⁸⁷ An extract from the journal Yörünge in 1993 underlines this point:

Irrespective of their religion and nationality, it is our right and duty to intervene in any state which attacks its citizens’ lives and freedom of property and thought and tyrannize its people . . . It is because ‘we are a benevolent umma not only for Muslims but also for the whole humanity’ . . . To achieve it, it is necessary to form such universal institutions as the Islamic United Nations, the Islamic Defense Pact and the Islamic Common Market, to apply all the rules and institutions of just order and to prepare an authority which is respected, deterrent and superior in political and military terms . . . The world domination of Islam does not mean that all countries would be conquered and all people would be converted to Islam. It means that peace and justice prescribed by Islam would be provided in the world, and a powerful authority and organization would be established to achieve this objective. ⁸⁸

All in all, Turkish Islamists extrapolate their power orientation for the sake of emancipation toward dogma, history, conjuncture and materiality. In so doing, Turkish Islamism aspires to replace the Western hegemony with its own hegemony. There is still no serious questioning of the international even in its so-called emancipatory scheme, with little, if any, explanation of what Islamic ‘justice’ is. It seems that its personalist account of domestic politics, which yearns for coming of righteous cadres to power to realise all projects, is replicated at the macro level of international relations with the ‘cadre’ of Muslim society of states. In this sense, it only seems to offer a hegemonic stability to the world.

Pluralist/Thinner Pan-Islamism

Pluralism or what can be called thinner Pan-Islamism implies the ontological legitimacy of multiple like-units in an imagined Muslim international society, where the existing order of the units of the Muslim world and the sovereign rights of Muslim states are largely preserved. This internalisation of states-system and of the particularities and separate interests of its members incorporate a Westphalian understanding of the international. In that, it prescribes territoriality and non-intervention, if not secular ordering of politics. For the journal Selâmet, ‘the age in which a Muslim state could violate the independence of other nations on the basis of its alleged caliphate has been closed forever,’ ⁹¹ because, as Raif Oğan in the journal Büyük Doğu follows in 1951, ‘the imperatives of the twentieth century have given birth to national entities rather than the ideal of religious unity.’ ⁹² Ömer Rıza Doğrul, the son-in-law of Mehmet Akif Ersoy, a well-known Islamist, claimed that:

It seems that there has been no one pursuing the unification of Muslims and dreaming the establishment of a unitary state for Muslims in this day and age. This is because we live in an age in which the principle of national self-determination prevails and is intended to properly prevail with no holds barred, and we hope that the whole humanity would achieve salvation, peace and wealth by this means. The objective of the contemporary Pan-Islamism is that Muslim nations would bear sympathy for each other, treat each other with favor, help and love each other, and if needed, support one another. A benign and decent Pan-Islamism that does not have any aggressive content and has no other objective than establishing the most solid friendship and peace between Muslim nations is a reality that is respectable in every respect, is worthy of promoting, and should be promoted. This is because it is a significant, strong and fertile substance that recognizes the principle of nationality and rejects the extremism of this principle, does not permit isolationism, and strengthens friendship, fraternity, solidarity, and cooperation. ⁹³

If ‘it is impossible for Muslim countries to realize the ideal of one umma-one country-one leader in this age,’ ⁹⁴ the corollary is an ‘Islamized territorial order,’ ⁹⁵ as Sheikh argues, assigning collective responsibilities to the members of Muslim international society. For the journal Sebilürreşad, ‘without unification that also guarantees their [separate] political existence, it is not possible for Muslim countries to handle contemporary challenges.’ ⁹⁶ As such, Pan-Islamism turns into an issue of diplomacy and international law through the interaction of a large number of Muslim states. In this way, Pan-Islamism is reduced to cooperative relations between Muslim states and a management of their common problems, notably their weakness in the face of imperialism, with very limited implication for international change. In fact, this embracing of pluralism is a concession to realism in the face of practical necessities, but the formulation is underwritten by a normative tone:

Even if it is desirable, political unity is difficult to achieve and practically useless because of such contemporary problems and facts as huge total population, diverging administrative styles and settled legal practices . . . However, it is still possible to embark on coordinated action in foreign policy. For example, it is plausible to take purposeful actions about such issues as Kashmir, Palestine, and Cyprus in the United Nations and several other organizations . . . When it comes to economic cooperation, it is both feasible and indispensable . . . Cultural correspondence is the easiest to achieve. ⁹⁷

Looking for a model to institutionalise Muslim international society, pluralist Turkish Islamists turn to contemporary world politics and functionalism, not to Islamic sources. In so doing, they tend to replicate the West, which has offered a set of ready-made models for cooperation particularly evident in the cases of the EU and NATO. Significantly, they do not seriously consider non-Western examples of cooperation such as the Non-Alignment Movement, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). For instance, this reasoning easily connects Pan-Islamism with European cooperation and integration in concluding that ‘the Muslim countries might not form the Common Defense Pact of Muslim Countries in a minute, but at least a few Muslim countries can realise what Germany-France defense agreement did.’ ⁹⁸ Indeed, no example is more telling than the names of a series of proposals of Necmettin Erbakan in the 1970s as well as in the 1990s, who was a long-time leader of Islamist parties in Turkey: the defence pact of Muslim countries (sometimes called Islamic NATO), the united nations organisation of Muslim countries, and the Muslim common market and currency. ⁹⁹ The statement below illustrates how this mimicry has marked the 2000s as well:

The European Common Market . . . was first set at work with the actualization of cooperation and unity among its members in material and economic domains. The Muslim world must draw a lesson from this story and can act in a similar way. Above all, they potentially have more essential unity and self-sufficiency than the members of the European Common Market do. ¹⁰⁰

The institutional arrangements found in the rest of the world are also decorated with Islamic concepts. In fact, pluralist Turkish Islamism tends to downgrade as well as update a set of classical concepts in a way that either represents a breakaway from traditional authenticity or attributes novel meanings to those conventional notions on the basis of what Turkish Islamists consider the imperatives of the modern international system. In this case, the Islamic authenticity does not act, but rather is acted upon. For example, a prestigious theologian, İhsan Eliaçık, devaluates the idea of the revival of a single caliphate, invalidates such classical legal concepts of Islam as daru’l-İslam and daru’l-harb, and instead, highlights cooperative relations ‘in the form of pacts or associations’ based on the Islamic notion of meşveret (consultation), in his 1995 writings. ¹⁰¹ Around more or less the same time, a popular figure of Turkish Islamism, Kadir Mısıroğlu, revives the idea of caliphate and proposes a committee of caliphate formed by popular elections throughout the Muslim world. ¹⁰²

Pan-Islamism thus would take the form of an international organisation, and at times, a confederation. ¹⁰³ Mirroring the Turkish Islamist obsession with power, survival and self-defence, this institutionalisation is often expressed in the form of security pacts and economic cooperation organisations with a high level of sectoral functionalism and only limited level of delegation of sovereignty. In the final analysis, while they attempt to elude the tension between the umma and the nation and to balance them, ¹⁰⁴ international change mainly refers to an improvement of Muslim international society’s status through following the same patterns of inter-state cooperation in world politics. Emin Işık’s 1972 writing reflects this pluralist Pan-Islamism’s effort to reconcile nationalism and Pan-Islamism:

It is incorrect to presume that Pan-Islamism and being a part of the umma conflict with being a part of the nation. It is because these two phenomenon are not opposites. On the contrary, they are complementary. Just as small nations form a set of pacts to guarantee their survival against external dangers, the umma consciousness provides a natural basis for the pact of Muslim nations. Therefore, considering the concept of the umma as antithetical and detrimental to the concepts of nationalism and nation is as mistaken as seeing a room as opposite to a house. ¹⁰⁵

Furthermore, this position even leads to perceiving the existing cooperative relations between Muslim states as such manifestations of Pan-Islamism, highlighting the superficiality and naivety of the Turkish Islamist conception of international change. It also reflects its state-centrism. That said, it should be noted that the Muslimness of those states is not seriously questioned when put to test to prove their Pan-Islamist nature. D-8 enterprise, ¹⁰⁶ for instance, is seen by some, as ‘an important step toward the long-awaited Muslim union,’ ¹⁰⁷ and by others, ‘a realization of the Islamic unity and an alternative to world system.’ ¹⁰⁸ In a similar way, one can find a Turkish Islamist perception of the Baghdad Pact (1955), a pro-Western defensive organisation of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Britain during the heyday of the Cold War, as a ‘step toward Muslim unification.’ ¹⁰⁹ In this sense, if there appears a pluralist critique against such cooperative attempts, it is directed against their dysfunction and mismanagement, not their underlying logic.

Finally, it is important to note that some, if not all, proponents of this vision regard pluralism as a penultimate and practical step toward monism, blurring the boundaries between these two positions. In this account, pluralism is considered as an incomplete yet acceptable and satisfactory solution, and in this way, Pan-Islamism turns into an ‘anything goes’ proposal. For example, it is a prescription about the gradual transformation of the Muslim pact into the single state of Islam. ¹¹⁰ A particularly interesting point is an explicit compliance with practical issues, instead of the predetermined imperatives of ideology. The ideal form might be ‘one state with one ruler,’ but ‘this oneness is not indispensable neither temporarily nor permanently’ because ‘what is important is to become one power and to be organized for one objective.’ ¹¹¹

To sum up, pluralist arguments, which seem dominant within Turkish Islamism, offer a highly functionalist and pragmatic account of Pan-Islamism with a high level of elasticity. They attempt to reconcile the umma and the nation. As such, what is Islamic about pluralist Pan-Islamism amounts to little more than friendship of Muslim-majority countries. They seek for an Islamic peace zone of Muslim states, resembling the democratic peace zone of liberal internationalists. What is intended seems to be an elevation in the international status of Muslims, with the already existing arrangements of the international system. In this sense, it is not only imagined as a peace zone, but it also denotes a power zone, which would be the matrix of a benignly hegemonic organisation of Muslim states. As for the position of this Muslim international society vis-à-vis the global international society, it involves a wide range of relationship models from diplomacy and coexistence to balancing and domination.

Monist/Thicker Pan-Islamism

At the heart of monism in Pan-Islamism or what can be called thicker Pan-Islamism is a rejection of the legitimacy of the Muslim inter-state society in which several units claim equal sovereignty. While a bunch of post-modern-inspired theses and neo-Ottomanist romanticism has contributed to this position, which will be discussed below, it is mainly a set of fundamentalist and revolutionary arguments that characterises it. Accordingly, the umma and the Islamic state, first and foremost, turn into a unique reference point in regulating ‘international’ relations of the Muslim world. This often finds its expression in the radical slogan ‘Muslims as one nation.’ ¹¹² In this sense, Islam dictates the formula of ‘one caliph, one state, one umma’ as it does not classify people by such categories as nationality and ideology, but merely makes a distinction between Muslim and non-Muslim. ¹¹³ This is to say that because ‘Muslims are the subjects of a single state, in which God is the sole sovereign and the sharia prevails, according to the Islamic dogma,’ ¹¹⁴ the plurality of their units is considered as deceptive and artificial at best and idolatrous and blasphemous at worst.

Accordingly, one can often come across the use of classical religious notions, understood as the Islamic concepts of international relations, in modelling and institutionalising monist Pan-Islamism. Though half-baked and immature, this is, perhaps, the unique part that largely avoids neologism and directly employs the authentic sources and their conceptual apparatus in explaining the Turkish Islamist conception of international change. Dividing the world between daru’l-İslam and daru’l-harb, ‘homeland’ is defined in relation to the existence of the Islamic rule. ¹¹⁵ Furthermore, as Landau argues, ‘the need for a strong central authority to lead Pan-Islam and to impose its ideology’ ¹¹⁶ bring these concepts to play along with a strict emphasis on the institution of caliphate. There is a popular equation between Pan-Islamism and caliphate since ‘the proper maintenance of the belief of a single umma depends on the presence of a single imam [leader].’ ¹¹⁷

It follows that Pan-Islamism is not understood in cooperative terms. What matters for the monist conception of international change is not Muslim inter-state cooperation and its intensification anymore. In fact, if the pluralist conception of international change is ‘international’ in the original sense of the term, monist Pan-Islamism suggests an anti- and supra-national one. In this way, while pluralist pan-Islamism is primarily an external dimension of Muslim states’ relations with each other, monist Pan-Islamism is intrinsic to Muslim states and any discussion on the nature of its polity. This is why those proposals for international cooperation between Muslim states have little, if any, positive reception in monist understanding. For instance, the idea of a Muslim pact and a common market, which frequently appears in pluralist accounts, are reckoned rather as the acceptance of the imperialist status quo as ‘such proposals recognize the legitimacy of different states and legal and economic systems, whereas Islam orders one system and structure.’ ¹¹⁸

This critique also combines with their devaluation of the actual cooperative arrangements between Muslim states. This is because these countries do not fulfil the condition of ‘Islamicness,’ and even, the plurality of these countries conflicts with what is understood as the Islamic unity according to the journal Şura: ‘There is no such thing as Muslim countries, but they might be called Muslim-majority countries at most . . . Therefore, their summits, common market attempts, bilateral banks and investments has no Islamic trait. These are only the cooperation of idolater states.’ ¹¹⁹ In this sense, the Organization of the Islamic Conference/Cooperation is often criticised for being an illusion of Pan-Islamism. Ali Bulaç is unequivocal in his terminology: ‘If Islam is to perform its fundamental binding function, there can be no such term as Muslim countries because there is only a single and unique country of Islam.’ ¹²⁰

Accordingly, if the term ‘organization’ corresponds to the model of pluralist Turkish Islamists, the concept of ‘entity’ is much more appropriate to describe the model of monist Turkish Islamists. The monist institutional model is based on the idea of federation, also expressed as ‘united states’ and ‘empire.’ To this end, while it is ‘a matter of life and death’ to transform the ‘shapeless states’ of the Muslim world into a federative body with the dissolution of national boundaries and to ‘form a multi-racial super-power like America, Russia, China and India,’ ¹²¹ the territories of the existing Muslim states are considered as a meaningful basis for this prospective political entity. In this sense, it implies little more than a ‘super-territoriality’ with a single social contract in a way that attempts to overcome the tension between (religious) commonality and (local/regional/national/sectarian) difference. One can still find no serious elaboration on the essential features of this prospective federation: the distribution of power among its units, the nature of authority, institutions, etc.

Furthermore, fundamentalist arguments at times seem to be inspired from the West in institutionalising their monist Pan-Islamism. For instance, Said Nursi suggests a federative model, which he calls ‘the union of Muslim republics’ and is outspokenly inspired by the United States. ¹²² In fact, the term ‘united states’ is widely used across different periods, ¹²³ which finds its origins in the United States of America. Even one of the most radical currents of Islamism in Turkey embraces it, in 2012, in its draft constitution prepared for its prospective entity named as ‘the United States of Islam,’ which would arise out of a set of federative agreements between the existing Muslim countries. ¹²⁴

An important part of this discussion on federative arrangement revolves around an anachronistic notion of empire. Turkish Islamists turn not only to what they regard as the contemporary success story of federalism, but also to history, in Yanık’s words, ‘bringing ‘empire’ back in.’ ¹²⁵ One can find this modelling in Turkish Islamists’ imperial nostalgia and myth of golden age and their ambition to revive this mythical imperial dominance. Beyond its perceived grandeur, the unique reference point here is the Ottoman millet-system, the imperial administrative model based on the hierarchical coexistence of religious communities. This neo-Ottomanist reading identifies the millet-system as a fundamental source of the success of the Ottoman Empire. ¹²⁶ It goes on to define the Ottoman millet-system as ‘the ideal model of society.’ ¹²⁷ According to Bulaç, the historical authenticity suggests that ‘the Muslim world has historically lent itself to an imperial political arrangement,’ and therefore, ‘one of the biggest problems of the Muslim world’ lies in the existence of nation-states and their unitary structure, which have forcefully divided the umma into nations. ¹²⁸ It concludes that ‘our historical experience shows that the Muslim people of the Middle Eastern region was administered by great states and empires, not by national and unitary states.’ ¹²⁹ That said, what is much more striking is the meeting of an imperial yearning with the Western intellectual debates, with such themes as pluralism, freedom, and the constructed nature of nations.

While proposing an imperial system centred on religious communities as an authentic political/social organisation in changing Muslim international relations, Turkish Islamists attempt to universalise their arguments in a way that redefines/transforms the authenticity claims. They rely mainly on the notion of pluralism and the critiques of the nation-state. Accordingly, the Ottoman millet-system is considered as a perfect representative of a pluralist model of social organisation ¹³⁰ or an order of coexistence. ¹³¹ One can even find empire in those writings as an essence of civilisation and freedom. ¹³²

Such conclusions are also extrapolated by instrumentalising constructivist approaches to nationalism, such as the works of Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner, to prove the artificiality of the nation-state, and eventually, the true path of ‘imperial vision’ is proposed to transcend problems created by the states-system such as wars. ¹³³ However, Turkish Islamists are far from directing this critique to religion in general, or Islam in particular, which they uncritically see as natural or primordial. ¹³⁴ As such, Bulaç’s remark that ‘the more real the umma, ethnicity, tribe, clan, family is, the more fake the nation is,’ ¹³⁵ comes as no surprise. It is possible to say that, prescribing the Muslim union as a ‘loose imperial model,’ empire is even considered as a universal solution for the ‘curse’ of the nation-state, whose ‘imagination of nation has no real, historical ground’ as scholars of nationalism demonstrate. ¹³⁶

It is in this interesting amalgam of fundamentalist, neo-Ottomanist and Western notions that one finds the expression of the monist understanding of Pan-Islamism. It criticises and rejects the existing ordering of international relations in the Muslim world. Instead, it offers a retrospective imperial model for the umma, remapping the Muslim world. When it comes to the global international society and any non-Muslim region of the world, it is rather silent about the prospective external relations of its immediate Muslim zone. This demonstrates the particularism of Turkish Islamism amid its ambitious claims for universality. In any case, it seems often coexistent with and rarely expansionary ¹³⁷ towards the non-Muslim zone.