Paper presented at the International Symposium "Beyond the Border: A New Framework for Understanding the Dynamism of Muslim Societies (October 8-10, 1999, Kyoto)

1. Introduction

In the context of modern Turkish political history, the Islamist movement and the Islamist political parties must be understood not only in terms of their specific Islamist ideology but also as the representative of specific social sectors reacting to the problems created by a number of factors: demographic growth, urbanisation and the changes in the social class structure that are the results of geographic and social mobility. The paper assumes that there is a meaningful relationship between political movements, demographic growth and urbanisation. The focus of the article is the demographic and structural changes in Turkey and the political implications attributable to these changes in the period from the late 1950s till the mid-1990s. The starting point for the analysis of the Turkish society being 1946 when the multi-party system began and when the population growth in the rural areas drove people to migrate to the cities. Prior to that, the article gives due attention to demographic changes, the expansion of the young population, migration from rural to urban areas and their implications for Islamic radicalism in the Middle East.

Studies on the Middle East show that demographic development has had a crucial bearing on the economic and political situation in the Middle East. In the economic sphere, rapid population growth has resulted in multiple hardships ﾐ in employment, housing, physical and social infrastructure. It has also stunted the process of economic development , hindered improvement in standard of living and economic well being, and been responsible for the persistence, or worsening, of poverty. Rapid population increase has had implications for the social changes in the area. It is one of the factors that has accelerated urbanisation, that is moving from the rural areas to urban centres, and motivated external migration , mainly for employment purposes. Moreover, it has created non-formal economy and greater participation of women in labour force. All these changes caused by rapid population growth have produced new political inclinations. On the political level, the most noteworthy development in this context has been the association between the rise of Islamist movement and demographic changes, one of which is the expansion of the young population in the urban areas.

1.2 Conceptual Definition of the Islamist

The observation of the phenomenon of religiously legitimated political radicalism in the Muslim world (e.g., political violence by the Egyptian, Algerian and Palestinian militants) and abroad (e.g., the bombing of the World Trade Centre in New York, bombing of the US Embassy in east Africa in 1998) has led many people to associate Islam with political activism, militanism and terrorism. These incidents brought the question of differentiating the religiously legitimated political radicalism from Islam. It is essential to make a distinction between Islam as a religion and Islamism as a political ideology and between a Muslim and an Islamist. A Muslim is a person professing Islamic faith. He can be a pious Muslim who practices religion or a sole believer who does not follow the observances faithfully. 'Islamism', on the other hand, indicates a political consciousness rather than a religious one. It is a conscious attempt to transform Islam from religion into ideology. It expresses readiness to take action to alter the secular structure of the public institutions, and to create an Islamic state in its extreme forms. Islamism in its most extreme and violent form has left its mark in the following examples taken from the Middle East in the 1980s. Most dramatic examples were the executions and the oppression of people in Iran as well as the attack to the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and taking hostages took place in 1979. Later, the militant Islamists, those who believe in the utilisation of political violence rather than employing democratic means to achieve political objectives, backed by Iran and vowing to eliminate un-Islamic governments and pro-Western influences were responsible for a serious of terrorist attacks in Lebanon including the suicide truck bombing of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in October 1983 by Hezbullah (241 Marines killed), and of the US Embassy annex in Beirut in September 1984. As a response to these attacks, the US forces withdrew from Lebanon in 1984. This development was and still is seen by the Islamists to be a great victory for Islam. Moreover, Islamists often cite the case of Lebanon and the success of the Islamists mujahidin in forcing Soviet troops to leave Afghanistan as examples showing the superiority of the radical Islamists movements over secular movements in mobilising mass support and achieving political objectives.

Islamism is a political ideology and an Islamist is not only an ordinary pious Muslim who follows religious observances as part of religion and folk culture; she/he politicise Islam and, therefore rejects the idea of religion being limited to belief, prayer, ritual worship, and private consciousness. The Islamist seeks greater Islamisation of the political and social systems through revolutionary and evolutionary strategies. The Islamist rejects the separation of state and religion on the grounds that Islam is both state and religion (din wa dawla). Therefore, the Islamist is very likely to consider the necessity of a gradual progress towards the ideal Islamic state and may be willing to undertake any type of role that is justified in terms of "Islamic" morals. The Islamist desires to change the perceived un-Islamic political system fundamentally with a rationale that it is not "Islamic" and that they cannot live Islam in all spheres of life. For the Islamist, Islam is total and it covers all aspects of life. Therefore, a legitimate political system of the Muslims should allow them to organise all aspects of their life in accordance with the Islamic teachings, referring to the Quran and the Sunna. His level of determination to establish a state of Islam where the rule of God is supreme and his readiness to take a political and militant action vary with a number of factors: the level of radicalism in his immediate socio-political environment, the characteristics of the legal framework defining his political action, the level of pressure on him to take an action, and the extent to which he justifies his action.

Islamists do not form a monolithic block. They are divided over key issues of strategy, and over the tactics deemed legitimate and effective in creating Islamic states. Moderate Islamists or Karawan's "political Islamists" think that the best strategy is to work within the system and seek a share in political power through the means approved by the system . On the other hand, the radical Islamists or Karawan's "militant Islamists" are against working within the system that is already "un-Islamic" by their definition. They think that they should fight against the perceived un-Islamic states and employ political violence to weaken that state and to destroy the citizen's trust in the state. They can utilise all kinds of means including violence .

Not all Islamist groups resort to violence to obtain their political goals. The Islamist groups in the Middle East, even those which often took militant action and used violence as a political tool to destroy the existing state structures, have largely changed their strategy from the late-1980s onwards. They have targeted the society rather than the state as a new strategy. Past experiences have taught many Islamists that violent struggle against regimes is futile, and offers those regimes the opportunity to crush Islamist movements and activists. As they have matured and developed infrastructure, roots, and sponsors, many of their members have moved away from confrontational and exclusionary tactics to espousing a politics of inclusion in the state. They formed political parties to contest for elections and compete for power through democratic and constitutional means. This has extended their appeal beyond the marginal elements in urban society to the educated middle class in the 1990s. Turkish case is an example of this strategy.

1.2 Demographic Growth, Urbanisation and Radicalism amongst the Muslim Youth in the Middle East

In the non-oil Arab countries, the 1970s and 1980s witnessed population increase and urbanisation without matching economic growth in real terms. Even regimes of the oil-rich Arab countries were running into trouble by the mid-1980s . Given this, the relationship between demographic growth and radicalism is a concern for the students of Middle East politics. Alan Richards perceives the underemployed, semi-educated young men as a critical source of support for extremist Islamist groups throughout the region. Likewise, Charles Maynes focuses on the expanding size of the youth in the region and their vulnerability to political extremism. Maynes points that persons between 15 and 24 years of age constituted roughly 20 percent of the total population or more in Iran in the 1970s, Syria and Turkey in the 1980s, and Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, and Jordan in the 1990s. Some of the most politically violent societies in the last several years have been Algeria, Iran and Turkey. Maynes asks: is there any relationship between the larger size of the youth and political violence?

The relationship between demographic growth and political unrest is a concern for many scholars. There is a growing literature that concentrates on the demographic growth and economic problems in the Middle East where there has been a region of interstate wars and internal upheaval within the last half of the twentieth century. In the region the labour supply in most countries is growing well over 3 percent per year, because the population growth accelerated after the 1950s. While the population grows, the rate of economic growth markedly decelerates during the 1990s. This, in turn, creates unemployment problem and fall in real wages . Ali R. Abootalebi underlies the discrepancy between the demographic growth and economic development by saying: "The economic growth of the region is even less impressive once population growth is considered. The population of the Middle East grew 2.33 percent between 1962-1975 and 3.08 in the 1975-1990 period. Thus, the rate of population growth for 1962-1990 stood at 2.61 percent, higher than the economic growth of 2.14 percent for the same time period" . The political implication of this discrepancy is a concern for many scholars. For example, Charles Maynes considers demographic growth and struggle over resources as critical factors that are more likely to affect political developments in the Middle East. In order to show how the situation is critical in the region Maynes presents the figures on a dramatic demographic growth in the coming century (e.g. Syria will become 50 million people by 2050 and Iran will swell to more than 160 million people ), and Egyptﾕs population was 65 million in 1997 and according to the forecasts, it is going to be 93 million in 2020. Demographic growth changes the age structure of the population that has economic and political consequences. The larger proportion of the current population is composed of the young people who compete for scarce resources and job positions. In the near future the size of the youth will not shrink, but stay as the present size. According to Maynes, the following countries are expected to experience a new youth bulge in the first 20 years of the next century: Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. This means that there is more likely to be unrest due to the struggle of the youth for limited resources in a region that has already had serious economic problems due to the lack of structural reform as well as effects in global economic developments. Despite the continued (thought reduced) influx of oil money, regional development remains surprisingly weak.

Is demographic growth always associated with economic problems and political unrest? Demography exerts its influence through changing the age structure of the population and, in turn, results in political changes. When it happens, Tarek Yousef argues, there is a large growth in the labour supply and an associated higher accumulation of productive capital. However, capitalising on the demographic gift will require a flexible and dynamic work force and accumulation processes, such as financial and stock markets. Does the Middle East have such processes? Is the Middle East capable of absorbing the growing labour supply into labour market? The answer is not "yes" because according to Yousef's estimates that the number of people that Middle Eastern labour markets are expected to absorb in the next 20 years is enormous: about 160 million between the years 2000-2020; and 30 million in the next 5-6 years alone. Despite his optimism about the solution of the large labour supply problem, Yousef identifies a few problems that need to be taken into account to cope with the growing labour supply: large public sectors in the Middle East that would shrink in the near future and, consequently fail to absorb a large proportion of swelling labour supply; the educational systems that continue graduate students with skills that cater to the "civil service track", rather than to the private sector; and the legal regulations and constraints that inhibit fluid movement into and out of public and private enterprises. There are another problems that hinder absorbing the growing labour supply in MENA countries: the large and growing unskilled segments of the work force, with low levels of quality education. The second one is the problem of the lack of 'achievement motivation'. Decades of socialism, oil-based subsidisation, and protectionism, Sirageldin argues, have produced a 'culture of dependency' in the Arab world . In addition to these problems, Ali R. Abootalebi mentions two other important shortcomings of the Middle Eastern countries: (i) the resistance of the political elite and entrenched interest against political reforms and economic adjustment policies since they see such reforms as threatening the status quo; (ii) high defence expenses and low investments in the economic and social developments (e.g., education and health).

All these problems are more likely to be antecedents of a high rate of unemployment amongst the youth, which is already high (e.g., in Jordan, Morocco, and Tunisia, roughly one five of urban young men were unemployed in 1993). This, in turn, would give rise to political tension and growing support for the radical ideologies with messianic messages. A crisis situation created by internal or external factors is also important for the frustrated youth to turn to a revolutionary movement. With regard to the role of the youth, Goldstone argues that a small change in the age distribution of a population could have a marked effect on popular mobilisation. Therefore, the growing size of the youth cohort and extended access to education are more likely to contribute to the mobilisation of the populace, which become critical at a time of crisis.

The demographic growth, expanding size of the youth and the migration from rural areas to urban centres played a role in the rise of the Islamist movements in the Middle East. With urbanisation, the Islamist movements, which were initially rural and provincial in nature, outgrown to become urban-centred national political factors. A large number of the newly urbanised young women and men, either university students, workers, civil sector employee, or unemployed, have joined the Islamist movements and become the major players. The initiatory players were composed of two main groups: (i) the former professional men of religion and tarikat sheikhs, whose political power was totally emasculated (as in the case of Turkey) or partially curtailed (e.g. Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria) as a result of the secularisation reforms executed by the secular nationalists who led the independence wars; and (ii) bazaaris (referring to those engaged in largely traditional, urban, small-scale production, banking, and trade and its artisans, merchants, and moneylenders). Religious figures and the sheikhs, who had mobilised people for the independence wars, were alienated from the formal political domain in the post-independence period. As a reaction, they withdrew themselves from formal politics and went underground to organise people for an Islamic cause (e.g., the case of Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia). It was not very difficult for them to motivate people for a religious cause because they did not lost their traditional influence on the masses that tended to seek the assistance and prayers of sheikhs at a time of crisis. The major ally of the sheikhs promoting Islamist cause was the bazaari (esnaf in the Turkish case) who had been often threatened by economic dislocation as a result of foreign economic penetration or domination that always favoured big capital. Then in the 1970s and 1980s a new ally emerged: the youth whose size expanded dramatically in the Middle East. The urban youth, particularly those, who are the first or second generation in the city and those who often originated from the provincial lower-middle class, have joined the Islamist movements. Some of them are university graduates without essential market skills and qualities, and some of them are educationally disadvantaged young people, majority of whom are members of the expanding urban sub-proletarian. Their size dramatically expanded in the late 1970s and 1980s in the Middle East countries excluding the oil-rich states because of three major reasons. First, the population grew 3.08 per cent in the 1975-1990 period in the region, and created a significant size of labour supply (as mentioned above). Secondly, the markets to absorb the labour supply has largely diminished. Neither the public sector nor the Western markets are more likely to provide the jobs demanded by the growing young population. Government payrolls cannot continue to expand; indeed, the imperatives of structural adjustments are already shrinking them. The Western European markets, which had absorbed the labour supply from Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Jordan in past decades, ceased demanding labour in the 1980s. Nor can the Persian Gulf states generate employment opportunities to the Egyptians, Maghribis, Turks, and Yemenis as they did in past decades. Thirdly, the limited investment in education and failure to educate and equip the young population with essential skill and knowledge for the modern market create a huge size of semi-educated underemployed youth, who are vulnerable to extremist political currents.

In the late 1990s, the population growth is still higher in many countries in the region (see Table 1). The competition in a region, where the youth are competing for scarce job positions, is an important challenge. This is one of the reasons explaining why the newly urbanised youth and the university students have become the major allies of the Islamist movements in the Middle East and Southeast Asia (e.g. Malaysia's ABIM movement in the 1970s and the Dakwah movement in the 1980s and 1990s).

1.3 Urbanisation and Social Change in Turkey

In Turkey too, the Islamist movement was initially rural and provincial in nature. It had been led by a number of tarikat (Islamic order) sheikhs and professional men of religion (ulema) who lost their economic power and political influence after the foundation of the republic (1923), the abolishing of the Islamic institutions (1923) and banning of the tarikats (1925). The major ally of the movement in the late 1960s and in the 1970s was esnaf, referring to petty-traders, merchants and artisans in the provincial cities with lower level of industrialisation and the under-urbanised groups deprived of educational and economic advantages. From the mid-1980s onwards essential activist support has come from the young city people who are often the members of the newly urbanised social classes (see below).

Turkey's population significantly increased almost threefold between 1950 and 1980. It rose from 20 million in 1950 to 27 million in 1960 and to 44 million in 1980. It reached 56 million in 1990 and to 62 million in 1997 (see Table 2). The data in Table 2 shows that Turkey has experienced a significant demographic change, that is, a demographic growth and the expansion in the size of the youth, and a high rate of urbanisation since the mid-1940s. The rate of increase in the urban population went up from 18.3 percent in 1945 to 65 percent in 1997. The highest rate of increase was in the years (1965-1970, with 6.1 percent). In the 1990s the rate has been estimated as 4.1 percent. The main reason for the rural-urban migration that began in 1950 was the rapid population growth in rural areas in the 1927-1950 period. Turkey's population rose from 13, 648,000 in 1927 to 20,947,000 in 1950 (Table 2) that pushed large numbers of small farmers and sharecroppers to urban centres as the scarcity of land resources hit them. Mechanisation of agriculture, which reduced the demand for rural labour, also played a role in pushing the people from rural to urban areas from the 1950s onwards. A large number of the rural nuclear families with a piece of land that was not enough to feed them became seasonal migrants or moved to cities.

Migration has followed two trends: (i) from rural to urban that began in the 1950s and peaked in the mid-1980s; and (ii) from the East, Southeast and Black Sea regions to the Marmara and Aegean coasts, which has accelerated in the mid-1980s. In the Black Sea the scarcity of land was the main reason for the migration and it pushed the growing population to the industrialised provinces. In the East and Southeast regions where the feudal lords owned the larger proportion of the land and employed a huge number of the landless peasants, rural labour moved to the new centres of commerce and industrialisation through the last three decades of expeditious economic growth (1960-1990) that was much faster during the 1980-1990 period. The migration from rural to urban was not only the result of the economic transformation taking place in the city and the displaced manpower from agriculture, but it was encouraged by the centre-right governments, whose strategies were based upon the mobilisation of the rural vote between 1950-1970 (see below). This is why the governments often pardoned the illegally constructed buildings and provided the slum people with ownership titles to the slum houses they built illegally on state owned land. Industrialisation has gained additional momentum from the mid-1980s onwards as a result of economic liberalisation program, and this, in turn, has pushed more people to the Marmara and Aegean coast provinces (e.g., Istanbul, Izmir, Izmit, and Adapazari). Moreover, in the 1980s and 1990s the clashes between the separatist PKK guerrillas and the security forces have compelled the southeastern and eastern populace to migrate.

With the rural-urban migration starting in the 1950s, most of the migrants were employed as unqualified workers and settled in the outskirts of the big cities. They settled in the shantytowns (gecekondu), which are deteriorated areas of the city inhabited by the economically disadvantaged people. Migration from rural to urban transformed rural poverty into urban poverty, which in turn deteriorated the socio-economic conditions in the big metropolises. Nevertheless, there was no policy to improve the physical and social structure, nor was there any demand from the public for such a policy. Throughout these decades of rapid economic expansion, when an influx of poor immigrants became the dominant element in the city, Istanbul's (one of the big metropolises that has received huge amount of migration) progressively deteriorating physical infrastructure and declining financial resources failed to generate action on the part of national governments in Ankara. The reason for this failure lied in the fact that overriding theme in the national political arena was the incorporation of peasantry into electoral politics (in the 1950-1979 period). Keyder and Oncu explain this: "Given a predominantly rural electorate, a succession of centre-right governments based their strategies upon the mobilisation of the rural vote. The progressive widening of the sphere of public intervention in agriculture --through price supports and credit schemes, coupled with the infrastructural investments in electrification, highways, and development of water resources --facilitated rapid commercialisation and integration of peasant communities into the national economy. It also shaped the counters of an electoral system wherein party support became rooted in the downward flow of patronage from central bureaucracy and the upward flow of peasant vote through clientelistic network". Indeed, later when the large shantytowns emerged in the metropolises the upward flow of slum vote through a new clientelistic network, which is built on the basis of primordial ties and solidarity, has become a key for obtaining votes. Associations based on Islamic and provincial ties have become the major networks that have provided communication between the isolated new comers and the power centres in the city and in the capital (see below).

Urbanisation and urban-centred industrialisation did not only attract the rural populace, but also a large number of town people who began to move to cities, particularly after mid-1960s. Increased number of places in the institutions of tertiary education and professional opportunities has pulled in many people to cities. This is why the provincial middle and lower middle class families migrated to cities with an aim of providing a better future to their children, while the very poor peasant moved for survival.

Despite the limited social mobility, the second generation of shantytowns had better opportunities of education and employment vis-a-vis their parents in the 1970s and 1980s. This paved the way to the emergence of a new middle class. Newly urbanised youth did not only profit from such opportunities, but they were also able to gain political sophistication referring to art of organisation, assembly, and expression in the 1960s and 1970s. Civil liberties provided by 1961 Constitution played a central role in the process of learning the art of politics by a large number of people and using it for the interest of a particular group. This enabled the better-educated newly urban Turks of provincial origin, who needed to compete with the children of the established elite, to form their associations (e.g., Islamist youth societies) with an aim of building a strong network. They were in alliance with the esnaf, a group that had to compete with big business. In this process, not only the economically weak or modest esnaf, but those who sprang from such a humble origin and the relatively privileged new middle and upper classes (see below for the allies of the Islamists) have become the allies of the Islamist movement.

While urbanisation has played a role in creating a modern urban society, it was not an even process. It has brought several socio-economic and socio-psychological problems that have become major factors in the rise of political extremism and Islamist currents. The former includes the population increase due to a large influx of people from the rural areas, the deterioration in the infrastructure, increasing polarisation of social classes (e.g., in Istanbul the lowest echelon in the social strata obtains 4.6 per cent of the total income of Istanbul, but the highest echelon gathers the 57.6 per cent) , and the proliferation of informal activities in the metropolises. The latter includes the problem of integration, alienation and anomie. Urban centres have not been able to integrate and assimilate newcomers within a social network albeit heavy urban accretion has been a continuos source of social criticism. The rural-urban and east-west migrations did not lead to the urbanisation of the masses, but they have created 'ghetto communities' whose members define social and personal relations in terms of particular provincial culture. Two related conceptual terms, 'urbanisation' (kentlesme) and 'becoming urbanised' (kentlilesme) have emerged from the critical debate , the second of which seems to have no equivalent in Western languages. While urbanisation means the concentration of population in a particular area, becoming urbanised signifies the process by which an individual city-dweller adopts urban values, makes use of the opportunities offered by the urban environment, and is integrated in the urban way of life. When the urban masses, which have lived in cities long enough and made use of the opportunities, but failed to adopt urban values, they are 'caught in between' and experience alienation: an experience brought about through the dissolution of peasantry. What in Turkish, is called 'arabesque' culture, a hybrid, urban subcultural phenomenon that has become widespread since the 1970s, is in fact a response to the alienation in the city. The feeling of being uprooted from primary groups that guided an individual and provided an identity in the traditional communal rural life also plays a role in the alienation of a newcomer in the city where the social organisation is based on secondary groups.

Anomie is another significant problem. Durkeim developed the concept of anomie. The term translates roughly as 'normlessness'. It describes a society, which has many conflicting sets of norms and values. No one set is strongly enough held and widely enough accepted to be very binding. The anomic society lacks consistent guidelines for people to learn; the anomic person has internalised no clear guidelines to follow. With the rapid urbanisation in Turkey several conflicting sets of values and life styles have emerged. They create confusion in peoples' minds about what is right and wrong. For example, in a shanty town where the life is organised on the basis of religious and traditional values and where there is tight social control, a young brother could kill her sister, if she is not 'modest' and chaste in her conducts. This does not mean that she has a sex affair with someone. A violation of the 'traditional' dress code, going out, window-shopping or talking to young boys could be an excuse. On the other hand, in an upper-middle class district brother and sister could go out with their flirts. In such a socio-cultural milieu, the newly urbanised people, who experience anomie, look for a definite guideline and an absolute guide to avoid anomie. Often the Islamist societies respond to the needs by offering an Islamic set of values as a guideline.

The Islamist societies do not only help the newcomers to find moral guidance in the city, but they also function as surrogate primary groups (e.g., family, kinship) and provide a sense of belonging to those who experience a bitter feeling of being uprooted from their traditional communal life where the primary groups provided an identity. In the city, Islamist groups and other associations (e.g., hemsehri dernekleri that includes people from a specific province), which are organised on the basis of primordial sentiments and ties (e.g., ethnic, sectarian, regional, religious), provide the newcomers with an identity, a network and sense of belonging. This is why the numbers of the Islamist societies that are organised in the form of association or foundation and the hemsehri associations have increased with the rural-urban migration that has created several socio-economic and socio-psychological problems addressed above. These associations are self-limiting because they combine their appeals to specific religious, sectarian and provincial people. In this sense they restrict the interaction of people with the core of the city life and, consequently encapsulate them in their ghetto communities. In this process, the urbanisation of a newcomer, who is even second generation in the city, is curtailed. This, in turn, makes them more vulnerable to religious and sectarian appeals.

2. The Expansion of the Islamist Movement in Turkey: From the Peripheral Underground Groups to Political Parties

How has the Islamist movement outgrown in Turkey? What type of strategies it has developed to express itself in the political arena as the socio-economic scene has changed in Turkey in the course of demographic growth and urbanisation? Who are the allies of the movement? How the profile of its allies has changed as a response to the changes in the social structure?

The Islamist movement emerged soon after the foundation of the secular republic in 1923. At its earlier stage, the Islamist movement was an underground movement, and the tarikat (religious order) sheikhs and the professional men of religion, who lost their status and economic power when the secular reforms abolished the religious institutions, led it. The Islamist movement expressed itself in the form of revolts against the secular state in the 1920s and 1930s, but it failed to mobilise a larger segment of the society. Consequently, the security forces crushed the Islamist revolts (e.g. the Menemen Incident in 1930 and a number of Nakshibandis -led revolts in the 1930s ). As a response, the Islamist groups, which included the Nakshibandis, and the Nurcus, stayed underground and formed a semi-secret platform to conduct their activities during the one-party rule when the People's Republican Party was in power (1923-1946). With the transition to a multi-party system in 1946, the Islamist groups, which were organised through tarikats that were outlawed in 1925, formed covert and overt alliances with the ruling centre-of-right Democratic Party (1950-1960). After the Democratic Party won the elections in 1950, it softened the secularist measures employed during the one-party rule. With the provision of civil liberties by the 1961 Constitution, the Islamist groups began to operate on legal grounds (despite the fact that in legal theory they were still illegitimate as the ban on their activities was not lifted) and forged alliances with the centre-of-right political parties. Until Necmettin Erbakan established the National Order Party (NOP), Welfare Party's predecessor, in January 1970, the Islamists had either been organised as conservative factions of a centre-right party or had remained underground. With the foundation of NOP, the Islamists for the first time had an autonomous party organisation through which they were able to express themselves more independently and to implement their own agenda.

The NOP largely represented the Anatolian cities held by the religiously conservative Sunnis and the small traders and artisans (esnaf) of the hinterland. These groups had long waited to benefit from the modernisation policies of the state. Nevertheless, the modernisation project had not made a significant change in the life of the Anatolian people, partly due to their resistance to modernisation in the name of religion and tradition (e.g., the girl children were not often sent to school on the ground that women did not need formal education, and that girls should not mix with boys). Instead, it had primarily provided educational and professional opportunities to the elite in the major urban centres, in particular Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. In addition to the frustrated periphery, the NOP also represented the religiously conservative people holding an informal membership in the outlawed religious orders, which formed silent but powerful pressure groups with their large 'Islamic' network.

The NOP was shut down by the Constitutional Court on May 20, after a military memorandum was issued in March 1971. The court outlawed the NOP on the grounds that it violated Articles 92, 94, 97 and 101 of the Law of Political Parties (Law No. 648, Articles 92, 93, 94). Soon after this development, the National Salvation Party (NSP), founded in October 1972, inherited the mantle of the NOP. With the support of the provincial merchants and the esnaf (small shop-keepers, artisans), and the covert network of the two leading informally organised religious groups, the Nakshibandis and Nurcus, the NSP, led by Erbakan, achieved a surprising electoral success in the 1973 general elections. It obtained 11.8 percent of the total votes while collecting over 15 percent of the votes in 20 provinces of the central and eastern Anatolia but not in the urban centres.

After its solid showing in the 1973 general elections, the NSP became a coalition partner in successive governments. First, it formed a coalition government with the staunchly secularist People's Republican Party (CHP) led by Bulent Ecevit in 1973. Soon after becoming a coalition partner, the NSP managed to enter its members into the key ranks of the bureaucracy, particularly the ministries that it controlled. Moreover, it succeeded in passing a bill that gave the theological high schools (imam-hatip) an equivalent position with the secondary schools and enabled the often pro-Islamist students of these theological schools to go beyond a theological carrier and attend universities. This was a key development in providing the religiously conservative pro-Islamist youth with an avenue of social mobility and of entering modern labour market in the urban centres. A large number of girls also enrolled in these schools. Many of these graduates have become Islamists with political power in the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., the mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayip Erdogan), and they have formed a powerful pressure group.

In the late 1970s, the governments failed to solve the country's most serious economic and political problems at a time when the antagonism between the radical left and radical right escalated into violent clashes that bordered on civil war. Moreover, in 1979 the Iranian Islamic revolution inspired many Islamists to take an active opposition to Turkey's secular regime. The political chaos and the civil strife moved the armed forces, led by General Kenan Evren, Chief of General Staff, to seize power in a bloodless coup in 1980. They restructured the political system with a new constitution drafted by a military-backed government in 1982. The leading parties, including the JP, NAP, NSP were banned from political activity after a long-running court case.

On July 19, 1983 the Welfare Party (RP) was formed under the leadership of Ali Turkmen, in place of the banned Erbakan. However, Erbakan and his comrades were acquitted of violating Article 163 of the Turkish Penal Code and following a positive vote in the referendum held by Turgut Ozal government, he and other political leaders banned were allowed back into politics. Erbakan became the leader of the Welfare Party.

In the first general elections entered under Erbakan leadership, in November 1987, RP received 7.2 percent of the total vote. In the 1989 local elections it polled 9.8 percent. However, it showed signs of its increased support in a metropolis by capturing municipalities in a number of districts in Istanbul (Sultanbeyli, Kagithane). In the October 1991 general elections, RP formed an electoral alliance with the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Work Party of Turkes and together obtained 16.7 percent of the total votes. This revealed a progressive increase in the votes of the Welfare Party and in the support given to the Islamists in the urban centres from the mid-1980s onwards.

It was during the mid-1980s and mid-1990s the Islamist movement drew the support of the larger segments of the population, the majority of which were moving from the periphery to the urban centres. The growth of the movement accelerated in that same period, when the peripheral groups were moving to urban centres from provincial towns and villages and gaining access to secular education and to the opportunity of upward social mobility. Islamist groups, organised through associations and foundations, responded to the needs and the aspirations of the newly urban groups whose members have diversity in their social class and occupational position, yet they share a common Islamic identity. They are the university students, professionals, shopkeepers, merchants, industrial workers, unqualified workers, etc. The Islamist groups have met their diverse economic needs by providing food to the needy; by supplying scholarship and hostel to the university students, and offering a network to the young graduates looking for jobs; and by granting credit to the shop keepers, industrialists and the merchants. The female assistance in meeting these needs has played a significant role and enabled the Islamist to reach people from various segments of the newly urbanised society. The self-help projects conducted by the females are particularly significant in this endeavour. Financial assistance has largely come from the newly formed Islamist business elite (see below).

The 'Islamic' strategy, which targeted the education of the society by reaching individuals to raise their Islamic consciousness and to create a new society against the secular elite, played a role in the rise of support for the Islamists in this decade. Newcomers in the city particularly, the youth, which were alienated in the city or frustrated due to limited education and professional opportunities, have been the target group for the Islamist re-socialisation program. This re-socialisation and recruitment process took place when counter Islamic culture was framed in terms of local Islamic idioms of justice and brotherhood. This generated a large number of Islamist groups; some organised in the form of an association or foundation and others, which form a minority within the movement, preferred an informal structure (most of them are clandestine groups that do not approve working within the system).

Not only the Islamist re-socialisation, but also the formal religious education provided as a part of formal education curriculum, played a role in the increase of interest in Islam as a religion and political ideology. The Islamist movement has grown during the post-1980 coup period when the governments perceived Islamic education in the schools as a panacea against the extremist ideologies.

In the late 1980s, a change in the social class is also significant in understanding how the Islamist movement has expanded: that is the emergence of a new urban middle class and business elite. Their members often originated from the provincial towns. Their parents are often self-employed petty-traders, small shopkeepers, merchants and agrarian capitalists. Some of them came from state employed petty- bourgeoisie families. A large number of the provincial youngsters from this background moved to big cities where they had tertiary education. Upon their graduation, they have been employed in the modern economic sector, which expanded in the 1980s as a result of the economic reforms that replaced the etatist economic model with a liberal approach (see below). They joined the urban middle class.

The liberal economic model and the export oriented economic development adopted by the then Prime Minister Turgut Ozal gave birth to a new business elite, also originating from a provincial background. This new model provided opportunities not only to the established business elite, but also to the small and medium size businessmen in the Anatolian towns. Some of them have developed their business in the provincial towns and built new factories, while others moved to Istanbul and in other industrial urban centres, because they saw the opportunities for expanding their business in these new centres of commerce. As they originated from the Anatolian towns, they desire to assert their Anatolian provincial identity and preserve their Anatolian values and traditions. This might be the reason for them to call themselves as "Anatolian Lions" ("Anadolu Aslanlarn). By doing so, they differentiate themselves from the more urban and westernised business elite represented by TUSIAD (The Turkish Businessmen's and Industrialists' Association that was founded in 1971) whose members are composed of chief executives of Turkey's 300 biggest corporations. The Anatolian Lions have grown up under the leadership of the pro-Islamist MUSIAD and now challenge the established business elite.

MUSIAD, the Association of the Independent Industrialists and Businessmen ('Mustakil Sanayiciler ve I_adamlarn Dernegi') was founded by a number of young pro-Islamic businessmen (Erol Yarar who was the president until May 1999, Ali Bayramoglu who replaced Yarar in May 1999, Natik Akyol, and Abdurrahman Esmerer) on May 5, 1990 in Istanbul. The first letter of its acronym, "M" is commonly perceived as standing for "Muslim" rather than for mustakil ('independent'). The founders of MUSIAD aimed to create an 'Islamic economic system' as an alternative to the existing 'capitalist system' in Turkey. This attempt did not go beyond slogans and it has not been transferred into a concrete project.

Its membership reached 400 in 1991, had risen to 1700 by 1993 and stood at 3000 in 1998. Its annual turnover is US $ 2.79 billion. Members are active in most sectors of the economy, particularly in manufacturing, textiles, and chemical and metallurgical products, automotive parts, building materials, and iron and steel and food products. There are also a number of powerful Islamist finance houses. MUSIAD aims to increase its membership from 3000 to 5000 and the number of its branch offices from 28 to 40 by the year 2000. With 28 branch offices in Anatolian provinces, it represents the religiously conservative provincial businessmen who have largely originated from the provincial small and medium businessmen, small shopkeepers and the rural agrarian capitalist families. Their views are active in the Islamist associations. They represent the people of the periphery, whose political participation and taking share from the main economic activities were suppressed by the centre until the mid-1980s.

The Islamist movement is an outlet to express political dissatisfaction with the existing order within which the masses on the periphery had long had disadvantaged economic and political positions vis-a-vis the elite at the centre. It has articulated anti-regime sentiments of various social groups and classes whose political satisfaction has increased with the sharpened cleavages characterising the Turkish political system.

At least five types can be noted: (i) centre-periphery conflict; (ii) class cleavages; (iii) regional cleavages; (iv) the Islamist-secularist conflict; and (v) the sectarian antagonism (i.e., Sunnis vs. Alevis). These divisions have not been resolved; they continue to exist, and have even deepened with the rural-urban migration. The conflict between the centre -- comprising the military officers, senior bureaucrats, notables, and the industrialist emerged as a result of the state-endorsed efforts to create a local business elite in the young republic -- and the periphery is the legacy of the Ottoman period. The Ottoman society was divided into two categories: the sultan, military, and the ulema at the centre, and the subjects (reaya) comprising a large proportion of peasants on the periphery. The Ottoman central authority was suspicious of the peripheral elements and, thus never permitted their independent organisation and input. There was always a huge social and cultural distance between the imperial centre and the Anatolian periphery. Despite the introduction of the equality of all citizens regardless of ethnicity, religion, region, the gap between the centre and periphery was not narrowed in the first three decades of the Republic founded in 1923. Conversely, the centre geared its policies towards keeping this gap. Social mobility and political participation of the periphery were largely blocked by the elitist policies. The periphery gained social mobility with urbanisation that began in the 1950s. Yet migration from rural into urban areas where commerce and industry were developing transferred the rural poverty to urban poverty. In metropolises large slums emerged, where people suffered from substandard housing conditions and lack of infrastructure. They constitute the new periphery whose members are often economically disadvantaged, culturally disintegrated, and politically isolated. Their social rage has fostered extreme political tendencies since the beginning of the 1970s. In the 1970s the revolutionary left articulated their political discontent and anti-regime sentiments. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Islamist movement has become a movement of protest to express their political discontent. Consequently, it has created political tension and acted as a source of political instability.

The conflict caused by regional economic imbalances in the 1990s and the sectarian antagonism between the Sunnis and Alevis has further complicated the political tension. Moreover, corruption allegations have aggravated the social rage and prompted calls for political protests. It has also mobilised people to turn to radical parties and groups challenging the system. The result has been the political polarisation and radicalisation of the electorate whose votes for the centre-of-right and centre-of-left parties have progressively declined since the late 1980s.

The socio-economic background, political aims, and interests of the allies of the Islamist movement are diverse: the large university student population, most of whom originated from the low and middle classes who have to compete with those from the established urban middle and upper-middle classes; members of the educationally and professionally unqualified young city sub-proletariat whose number has increased with the rural-urban migrations and with the higher level of unemployment (that is around ten percent officially); some of the newly urban workers; state-employed petty bourgeoisie who have been proletarianised with the fall in real wages and the high inflation, particularly since the late 1980s. In addition to this, there are bourgeoisie factions including some of the relatively privileged new middle and upper classes; rich merchants, businessmen and industrialists who sprang from humble esnaf origin, some rural agrarian capitalists; radical intellectuals searching for an anti-regime movement of protest. Other groups from which the Islamists have draw support are the former ultra-nationalist (ulkucus) who originated from conservative Sunni provincial towns in Central and East Anatolia, who turned to religion and Islamism after the military coup of 1980 with the realisation that the nationalist movement failed and that they shared many common cultural qualities and political interests with the Islamists; a small group of young ulkucus; a sizeable number of religiously conservative Sunni Kurds, who assume that an Islamic order could possibly bring solutions to the regional conflict, which has expressed itself as a separatist ethno-nationalist movement since the early 1980s and cost more than 30,000 lives as a result of the clashes between the outlawed separatist PKK (the Kurdish Worker's Party) and the security forces.

Various types of discontent, grievances and aspirations of this diverse population (portrayed above) conferred political power to the Welfare Party. In the March 1994 local elections the missionary work of many young Islamist men and women, who actively campaigned for the Welfare Party, brought electoral success to it. The RP won 28 mayorships; six major metropolitan centres, and the leadership of 327 local governments. Nation-wide, the RP received 19 percent of the vote. In the 1995 general elections, RP obtained 21.4 percent of the votes and gained 158 seats in the Grand National Assembly.

2.1 The Rule of the Welfare Party and the Military Intervention in Politics

After the short-lived Motherland-DYP government collapsed in 1996, the RP formed a coalition government with Tansu Ciller's True Path Party in July 1996. Almost after a year, in June 1997, the RP-DYP coalition broken down due to a dispute over the passage of an un-interrupted eight-year compulsory education bill drafted as a response to the its recommendation by the National Security Council (MGK ) on February 28, 1997 meeting (see below). Secondly, the crisis created by the Welfare Party mayors and deputies, whose anti-secular rhetoric and activities agitated the secular public opinion, played a role in the collapse of the coalition. Thirdly, the Erbakan-Gaddafi relationship caused even more of a stir when some suggested that Erbakan might actually owe his ultimate allegiance to the Libyan leader given Gaddafi's role as the head of the Islamic People's Command to which Erbakan also belonged. This secretive organisation's mission included the formation of an international Islamic union, the proliferation of Islamic philosophy, and the espousal of jihad or holy war.

These developments exacerbated tension between the military and the Welfare Party. It had been building due to: a disagreement over the expulsion of the Islamist officers from the army in December 1996; the Welfare Party's attempt to sign a defence co-operation agreement with Iran; Welfare's call for lifting the ban on head-covering for female university students and the civil servants; the dispute over building a mosque at Istanbul's Taksim Square; the Iranian-inspired Jerusalem Night (January 31, 1997) in the Welfare-controlled Sincan district of Ankara (where anti-regime slogans were shouted); and Erbakan's reluctance to sign NSC's recommendations (formulated at the 28 February, 1997 meeting with an aim of curbing the Islamist activities). The Welfare Party did not only antagonise the military but the secular public opinion too. RP's anti-democratic position on a number of developments described below disappointed the secular public opinion. First, Refah's support for the constitutional arrangements of the state looked ambiguous to them and its interest to maintain Turkey as a secular state was not clearly stated. Secondly, its understanding of democracy was vague and insensitive to women's rights. Moreover, the Refah leader and the leading party members as well as its grassroots did not give a democratic response to various political developments. For example, Necmettin Erbakan and Justice Minister Sevket Kazan made both critical and insulting comments on the people who took part in the "One Minute of Darkness for Enlightenment" civil protest in February 1997. The Islamist dailies including Akit and Yeni Safak were also severely critical of the protest in January-February 1997. Finally, many allegations that the Welfare Party had connections with the militant Islamist groups created questions in the minds over their commitment to democratic principles.

As a result, the tension between the military and Refah and the antagonism between the Islamist and the secular public opinion escalated. They all provided a legitimate framework to start a court case against the Welfare Party in May 1997. Consequently, Necmettin Erbakan was banned from politics and the Welfare Party was outlawed in January 1998 by the Constitutional Court on the grounds that it violated the principles of secularism and the law of the political parties. Refah's leader Necmettin Erbakan and seven other deputies lost their parliamentary seats and were banned from politics in January 1998. Moreover, on June 29, 1998 Erbakan was charged with defaming the Constitutional Court by saying that the ruling of the Court did not have any historic value, and that those who had passed that judgement had not passed it only against the RP but unfortunately against themselves as well. By dissolving the party, the ruling left more than hundred seats vacant in Parliament and it orphaned local administrations.

2.2 The Virtue Party

A new party, the Virtue Party (FP), was founded by the 33 former RP deputies under the leadership of Recai Kutan on December 17, 1997. At that time it had 144 seats in the parliament which it had obtained as a result of the switchover of the RP deputies. The conservative wing controlled by Erbakan elected the parliamentary group leaders before the reformist wing, lead by the then Istanbul Mayor Recep Tayip Erdo_an, could pull itself together. However, this did not end the power struggle in the Virtue Party between the party's young reformists and those loyal to Necmettin Erbakan. It went on, and resulted in the resignation of four (Cemil Cicek, Ali Coskun, Abdullah Gul, and Abdulkadir Aksu) of the reformists on July 26, 1999. Their resignation was interpreted as a move to form a new party given the fact that the Constitutional Court opened a closure case against the Virtue Party after the April 18, 1999 elections on the charges that the party was carrying out anti-secular activities and was the successor of the RP. However, they denied any plan to form a new party in their July 1999 press statements.

Prior to the 1999 local and general elections, the Virtue Party set up an organisation in all provinces and districts of the country, then began recruiting new members. It renewed its membership profile. According to the Law, a newly founded party that replaced a banned political party shall omit 50 percent of the total membership of the now defunct party. The Virtue Party went even farther and it renewed 60 percent of the members who were recruited by the now defunct Welfare Party.

Along with renewing its membership, the Virtue Party has tried to rectify its image as anti-women and un-democratic. It recruited a number of highly educated, upper-middle class modern women, for example, Nazli Ilicak and Prof. Dr. Oya Akgonenc. Women from lower social classes carried the party to power, and were able to participate in public life as result of the political infrastructure provided by the Welfare Party. But, despite their contribution, they were not invited to be represented at the higher ranks. The Virtue Party appointed Ilicak, Akgonenc and Gulten Celik as female members of the Central Decision-making Board. They are all modern, urban women from the upper-middle class background. Only Celik dons a head covering, but she represents the 'modern pious women', who have been more visible in the public domain since the early 1990s. Their selection reflects the trajectory of the Islamist movement, which originated in the rural-provincial environment and expanded to the urban milieu in the course of modernisation, urbanisation and migration from the rural-provincial areas to the big cities.

Both Turkey's leaders and the party's supporters ask how the FP differs from the RP. The Virtue Party has given signals that it takes some new approaches. For example, the FP declared support for the Turkey's EU membership, a step the RP opposed for three decades. An additional change was the FP's appointment of two women, who do not wear headscarf, to its Central Decision-making Board. This is a deviation from the Welfare Party's former emphasis on an Islamic dress code (tesettur) for its supporters. Third, instead of mentioning the old party's 'Islamic mission', its rhetoric emphasises democracy, human rights and personal liberties. The party's well-trained female orators (hatibeler), who carry the message of the party from person-to-person, speak about freedom and individual rights instead of talking about Islam and inviting people to revolt against the present regime that was perceived to be un-Islamic by the Welfare Party. While the RP promoted head-covering and announced that they were determined to lift the ban on headscarf in the public offices during the premiership of Erbakan, the FP has downplayed the head-covering issue, since it realised that this issue ignited a conflict between secular and religious forces and alarmed the military to take measures to eradicate the Islamist treat. Nevertheless, it has made critical statements against the ban on headscarf at universities. These critics have taken strong dose after the FP lost votes in the 1999 general elections. In these critics, the FP presents the headscarf ban issue as a matter of human rights violation and suppression of personal liberties rather than as a matter of religion.

Another change in the rhetoric of the Virtue Party is its highlight of the theme of 'millet' (nation), which, I argue, refers to the Muslim community living in Turkey in the RP-FP discourse. 'Millet' was also a key theme in the RP's discourse, but there was a strong organic link between 'millet' and devlet ('the state'). The present FP rhetoric has differentiated 'millet' and state as two separate entities since the early 1998. They are no longer concord, but two rival entities. 'Millet' struggles to expand the scope of the civil domain in order to create an autonomous space for their political activities. On the other hand, 'devlet' tries to control and restrict the space given to the 'millet'. As an alternative to such a 'repressive' state, the FP has introduced the concept of a humanitarian state 'devlet' that meets 'millet''s needs without totally dominating it, a more democratic rather than more authoritarian state. This issue has become a dominant topic in articles published by Milli Gazete since January 1998, and several conferences discussed this question.

Another interesting development is the FP's position on the 'Kurdish issue' is that the RP had not been hesitant to talk about Kurdish identity and the cultural rights of the Kurds without seeming to go further in backing bigger demands. The FP's chairman Recai Kutan made statements in favour of 'cultural rights', announcing in August 1998, "It would be necessary to recognise some of the rights of Turkey's Kurdish identity The right to educate and publish in the Kurdish language would have to be considered after discussions and a normalisation period". However, the FP has become more cautious after the capture of the outlawed PKK leader in February 1999, an event that has further aggravated the political tension in Turkey.

The FP has tried to change its image in a number of ways. For example, rather than holding sexually segregated social gatherings, as they did in the past, it organises dinner parties where men and women mix freely (e.g., Nazli Ilicak and Recai Kutan sang together at a dinner party in 1998). While such endeavour alienates the religiously conservative supporters, the leaders advise the grassroots to understand the necessity of changing the image of the party and making concessions.

3. Conclusion

The current literature includes studies that associate the demographic growth and the consequences of the increased labour supply with Islamist radicalism amongst the Muslim youth in the Middle East where the lack of structural reforms, fiscal crisis, limited investment in education and certain socio-psychological factors hindering achievement orientation are obstacles for the expansion of a healthy private sector. This obstructs absorbing the growing labour supply at a time when the number of the young people, who compete for scarce resources, jobs and positions, has increased since the mid-1980s without matching growth of job markets. In the region the last three decades recorded economic regression, fall in real wages and increased unemployment, particularly amongst the youth. These developments have hit the newly urbanised social classes whose members encounter urban alienation and experience anxiety due to restricted avenues of political participation in the elite-blocked states. Islamist movements have responded to them by expressing a desire for a total change, ranging from Islamisation of a way of life to a way of government. They have supported a total change because they have not been satisfied with the present regimes and ways of lives in many Middle Eastern countries.

Beginning in the 1950s and peaking in the 1980s, a number of developments greatly advanced Turkeyﾕs modernisation. These same events also transformed Turkish politics. The result was a confrontation between provincial/traditional and urban/modern cultures, new social classes, and the fragmentation of the conservative electorate from the 1970s onward. This same situation provided the environment for the growth of Islamist parties in Turkey taking votes away from their centre-right competitors.

Islamism has grown as a response to social, economic, and political discontent, including foreign influences, urbanisation, modernisation, and secularisation. Political discontent has gained momentum amongst the newly urbanised youth whose size has expanded as a result of the demographic growth. The peripheral social classes, which have moved to the cities as a result of urbanisation, have become the major allies of the Islamist movements. The supporters of the Islamist movement and those who voted for the Welfare Party-Virtue Party often originated from a rural and provincial social milieu where traditional communal life had provided an individual with security and where primary group networks offered an identity, organisation, and avenues of political participation throughout a clientelistic network. In the city, however, they are deprived of the primary group support, they are afraid of social isolation and exclusion from the decision-making mechanisms. They feel powerless and they encounter urban alienation and anomie in a heterogeneous socio-cultural milieu where there is no single set of values guiding people. This creates personal crises, inner contradictions, and a sense of insecurity. Moreover, economic problems hit them: the fall in real wages; the hardship in the slums where the poor infrastructure and sub-standard housing degrade life standards; the difficulties in providing formal education to their children and the increasing unemployment that frustrates the youth. In response, they turn to Islamist brotherhood networks that have provided them with an identity, organisation, formal education and job opportunities, and the channels of political participation. This has enabled the newly urbanised lower social classes to compete with the established social classes that have much benefited from modernisation and urbanisation vis-�-vis the peripheral social groups. In return, they endorsed the Islamist political parties that empowered the newly urbanised peripheral groups. As the peripheral groups gained social mobility and formed their intelligentsia and bourgeoisie, the Islamist Welfare Party increased its electoral support from the mid-1980s onwards. It expanded its support from the traditional rural-provincial electorate to the newly urbanised social classes. The Welfare Party articulated the specific social sectors reacting to the consequences of rapid urbanisation and economic growth.

The Islamist movementﾕs upsurge, the growth of ultra-nationalism and Kurdish ethno-nationalism have eroded the centre in Turkey. The centre-right parties have declined since the mid-1980s because they did not meet their constituency's needs or expectations, and also failed to absorb the compromising sprit of democratic liberalism.

The erosion of the centre-right and increased support given to the Islamist and the ultra-nationalist parties has not yet created the danger of regime instability . The nationalist secular majority in Turkey, supporters of the Democratic Left Party (DSP) and other parties, counterweight the Islamist and ultra-nationalist groups in both public life and in parliament.

APPENDIX

Table 1: Population Growth Rate, the Size of the Population in the Age Group of 0-14 Years Old, and Unemployment Rates in the Selected Middle Eastern and North African Countries

Country Population Growth Rate Population in the Age Group (0-14) Unemployment Rate

Algeria 2.14 %(1998 est.) 38% 28% (1997 est.)

Egypt 1.86 %(1998 est.) 36% 9.4%(1997 est.)

Iran 2.04% (1998 est.) 43% 30% (1998 est.)

Jordan 2.54% (1998 est.) 43% 15%(1997 est.)*

Morocco 1.89% (1998 est.) 36% 16% (1997 est.)

Oman 3.45% (1998 est.) 41% NA

Tunisia 1.43 % (1998 est.) 32% 15% (1997 est.)

Turkey 1.6% (1998 est.) 31% 5.9%(1997 est.)**

Syria 3.23% (1998 est.) 46% 12% (1997 est.)

Yemen 3.31% (1998 est.) 48% 30% (1995 est.)

*15 percent official rate; note actual rate is 20%-25% (1997 est.)

**5.9 percent with another 5.1% officially considered under-employment (1997 est.)

Source: it is compiled from the data provided in www. odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/

Table 2: Statistical Data on the Urbanisation in Turkey

Percent Contribution to Urban Increase

Years Total Population Percentage of Urban Population NM CD NI Total

%

1927 13,648,000 -

1945 18,790,000 18.3 62.9 14.7 22.4 100

1950 20,947,000 18.1 55.0 12.8 32.2 100

1955 24,065,000 22.5 51.2 17.6 31.2 100

1960 27,755,000 26.3 49.5 18.8 31.7 100

1965 31,391,000 29.9 57.5 19.3 23.2 100

1970 35,605,000 35.8 52.5 15.9 31.6 100

1975 40,348,000 41.4 46.7 12.1 41.2 100

1980 44,737,000 45.5 46.4 11.7 41.9 100

1985 50,664,000 51.1 44.9 11.8 43.3 100

1990 56,473,000 56.3

1997 62,865,217 65.03

NM: Net Migration to the Cities

CD: Due to Change in Definition

NI: As a Result of Natural Increase

The data compiled from the following sources: S.I.S : 1995. The Population of Turkey 1923-1994 Demographic Structure and Development. Ankara: SIS Publications; and www.die.gov.tr/TURKISH/SONIST/NUFUS/nufus97.html.