Religion and Nationalism: Contradictions of Islamic Origins and Secular Nation‐Building in Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan*

Abstract

Objectives. Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan have been persistently challenged, since their founding, by both Islamist and ethnic separatist movements. These challenges claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people in each country. I investigate the causes behind the concurrence of Islamist and ethnic separatist challenges to the state in Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan. Method. This research employs comparative historical analysis, and more specifically, a most different systems design. In addition to small-N cross-national comparison, I also designed an intertemporal comparison, whereby Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani history is divided into four periods, corresponding to preindependence, mobilization for independence, postindependence secular nation-building, and Islamist and ethnic separatist challenge periods. Results. Contrary to the prevailing view in the scholarship, this article formulates an alternative reinterpretation of Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani nation-state formation. These three states were founded on the basis of an Islamic mobilization against non-Muslim opponents, but having successfully defeated these non-Muslim opponents, their political elites chose a secular and monolingual nation-state model, which they thought would maximize their national security and improve the socioeconomic status of their Muslim constituencies. The choice of a secular and monolingual nation-state model led to recurrent challenges of increasing magnitude to the state in the form of Islamist and ethnic separatist movements. The causal mechanism outlined in this article resembles what has been metaphorically described as a "meteorite" (Pierson, 2004), where the cause is short term (secular nationalist turn after independence) but the outcome unfolds over the long term (Islamist and ethnic separatist challenges). Conclusion. A distinct and counterintuitive path of nation-state formation has been identified based on the cases of Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan. This research demonstrates that a contradiction between the goals of the original mobilization that establishes the state and policies of its postindependence governments can be a major structural source of instability and violence in the long run. These findings suggest that theories of nationalism that were developed based on the European experience of ethnic or linguistic nationalism need to be modified in explaining the religious nationalism that is found in the origins of some of the major nation-states in the Muslim world.Why are the Turkish, Algerian, and Pakistani states persistently challenged, since their founding, by both Islamist and ethnic separatist movements, with some of these challenges resulting in extremely violent confrontations? While there are many states where religious movements challenge secularism, such as India and the United States (Kuru, 2007; Needham and Rajan, 2007), and there are many other states that face challenges from * for their constructive comments and criticisms on previous versions of this article. As usual, all respons...

Temporal Horizons in the Study of Turkish Politics: Prevalence of Non-Causal Description and seemingly “Global Warming” Type of Causality

“…For example, in an attempt to directly address this potential weakness, I published an article with an explicitly Meteorite type of causality seeking to explain the long-term Islamist and ethnic separatist challenges to the state in Turkey, Pakistan, and Algeria, where I entertained both long-term structural and short-term agentic causes. 28 One methodological precaution in employing any causal argument is to entertain the possibility that not only different causes but also different causes of varying temporal horizon (short-and long-term) may be responsible for the outcome of interest.…”

Understanding the exclusionary politics of early Turkish nationalism: an ethnic boundary-making approach

“…Such concerns were reinforced and seemed justified with the Ottoman Empire's defeat in World War I, the Allies' occupation of Istanbul, and a Greek invasion bent on annexing much of western Anatolia. The religious nature of the conflicts in the Balkans and the religious overtones taken on by World War I and the Turkish War of Independence would playa powerful role in determining where the boundaries of the new Turkish nation would be established (Akturk 2015).…”

Constructing an Islamic Nation: National Mosque Building as a Form of Nation-Building

“…Existing Literature: National Identity, Islam, and Mosque Building Scholars have identified various nation-building strategies employed by political elites, such as centralizing transportation and communication networks (Weber 1976), nationalist military training (Posen 1993), and including nationalist content in textbooks (Darden and Gryzmala-Busse 2006). Scholars have also demonstrated how Islam has been used to serve the project of nation-building in officially-Islamic states (Aktürk 2015, Asad 2009, Ayoob 2007, Cesari 2014, Eickelman and Piscatori 1996, Nasr 2001, and recent scholarship has examined the interplay between Muslim identity, state power, and urban planning (Atia 2013, El-Kazaz and Mazur 2017, Koch 2016. However, many of these insights pertain specifically to the MENA region, while more theoretical work on the relationship between religion and nationalism (Brubaker 2012, Friedland 2002) often fails to consider Islamic cases, as well as the strategic use of physical space.…”