Book Review: The Neoliberal Landscape and the Rise of Islamist Capital in Turkey by Nesecan Balkan,Erol Balkan,Ahmet Oncu (Eds)

When the AKP (Justice and Development Party) was founded in 2001, it was presented inside and outside of Turkey as a miracle model of governance in which Islam and neoliberal capitalism operated hand-in-hand in peace towards a social, political and economic transformation of the country. Since then, a lot of water has passed under the bridge, the one-man authoritarianism of Erdogan based on the AKP’s sectarian Islamism and nationalism has become the focus of critiques. Yet, critics, be it in academia or intelligentsia, still seem to be hesitant to point their fingers at the networks of neoliberal relations that the AKP governments has over the past 15 years enforced (if not introduced) on Turkey. There has been a considerable literature at hand on Islamism, class formation and neo-liberalism in general in Turkey, yet this book comprehensively approaches each of these phenomena, providing the reader with a strong entry point to understand “the neoliberal landscape” of Turkey.

As a volume originally published in Turkish, this book was coherently edited in the way that it opens up as the reader follows through; each chapter builds on each other. From a contextual discussion on political Islam to a theoretical debate on the rise of the Islamic capital and with cohesive empirical studies, each piece in the volume step-by-step reveals an image that could be rather puzzling to many.

Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the volume focusing on Islamism, or political Islam, in its international and national contexts respectively. While Chapter 1 hints at the national context from which the AKP emerged, the chapter discusses more transnational economic and political relations which produced, disseminated and maintained political Islam from a historical perspective. Chapter 2, building on the first, shifts its lens to political Islam in Turkey delving into its historical and economic roots. The first two chapters in that sense, if read together, succinctly pin the AKP in the larger transnational map of political Islam.

After the first 2 chapters, each of which are entrance points to the volume and the context, the following three chapters focus on the debate on whether Islamic/Anatolian capital, independently from the secular/Istanbul capital, is on the rise. Chapter 3 lays the ground for the debate and displays the fragmentation and conflicts between the two factions of capital through the presentation of statistical data. Yet, the dependence of the chapter on frequent and lengthy quotations from other scholars considerably weakens the argument of the author.

Chapter 4, on the other hand, makes its stance more clear, viewing Islamic capital as on the rise and explaining this rise through a politico-historical framework. In a concise fashion, the chapter argues that the relationship between the AKP and Islamic capital cannot be understood solely through the development of Islamic capital. Rather, the author opines, the complex web of national and international neoliberal relations between the governing party and Islamic and secular capitals alike should be the foci in this debate.

Chapter 5 in a sense deepens the debate on the ascension of Islamic capital. While questioning the term Islamic capital itself, the author goes beyond the preconceived notions of Islamic capital based on size, region or affiliations. Yet, in a similar line with the previous chapter, the author calls for a more complex approach to Islamic capital; one which takes into account capital accumulation and limits to it, communal networks of business owners, interest-free banks, political parties, and in the current atmosphere, the internationalization of capital.

While the previous three chapters are theoretical engagements with the debate on Islamic and secular capital fractions, Chapter 6 gives the empirical ground to the debate on the basis of a 2009 survey of 434 middle-class families of both secular and Islamic factions. Given the current rising tide of middle-class studies, this timely study suggests that despite differences in overall lifestyle, as well as ideological and cultural orientations, at the end of the day both secular and Islamic middle classes share similar neoliberal lifestyles and values. In fact, both benefit from the neoliberal landscape in Turkey.

Chapter 7 presents a unique and striking discussion from a Gramscian perspective on the mechanics of how the AKP forged its hegemony. The author argues that the AKP regime built itself on a coalition of diverse factions of society, yet it also maintains a constant confrontation among and across each unit in this coalition. In turn, the author argues, the AKP regime retains a balance of power relations through negotiations and concessions across a variety of contradictions. Taking the AKP as a hegemonic project, the author eloquently shows how consent and coercion uninterruptedly interplay in Turkey, making “consent without consensus” one of the core aspects of the AKP’s Turkey.

Chapter 8 turns to the Gulen Movement, which is hinted at in almost all of the other chapters but until this point not scrutinized in detail. The chapter, deriving from an ethnographic fieldwork, looks into the Movement’s networks of education, media and business. The author utilizes the Gramscian concept of passive revolution to define the Movement and objectionably argues that the Movement does not attempt a total social and political transformation in Turkey (and beyond), but rather an “increase [in the] Muslim share in Turkish capitalism”(p:237).

Chapter 9 shifts to another significant aspect of the AKP hegemony in Turkey: the media. The authors look into how the fragmentation of Islamic and secular capitals manifest in the mainstream media, especially newspapers. The chapter argues that the ongoing media wars among the Islamic and secular factions of Turkish capital are in fact a fight to hold on to the power; however, through monopolization of media giants and oppression of opposition, hegemony and domination of the masses prevails, be it at the hands of Islamic or secular capital.

All in all, the volume is a marvelous collection of well-argued and succinct articles on major aspects of the hegemony of AKP the rule in its so-called New Turkey. Each chapter delves into the specifics of how AKP rule solidified itself in the country, despite opposition which was crystallized in the latest June Resistance in 2013. I highly recommend this book to all scholars and students alike who are interested in the rather harsh terrain of the neoliberal landscape of Turkey and Islamist capital in general.