Diriliş: Resurrection theme in the populist regime of ‘New Turkey’

Abstract

Populism has become the pillar of contemporary right-wing politics, and it has a large discursive toolkit, varying in different geopolitical contexts but always drawing its references from existing narratives, myths, affects, and cosmologies of a given public. The success of populist regimes lies particularly in their ability to harness existing imaginaries and turn them into political currency. Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) is no exception to this trend through its constant cultivation of antagonistic themes and manufacture of new hostilities. To get a better grasp of the ways in which this is accomplished, this report focuses on one of the most appealing, popular, and political themes in Turkish-Islamist politics: Diriliş (Resurrection). One can come across this theme in national politics, foreign policy, popular media, or the Islamist intellectual realm. Starting out as a Turkish Sunni Islamist philosophy in the Islamist intellectual realm, the diriliş theme proliferated over the years, subsequently with the rise of political Islam, and became a building block of Turkish-Islamist populist discourse in Turkey. With a close focus on various Islamist journals in İslamcı Dergiler Projesi (Islamic Journals Project) database and media, popular culture, and politics, this report charts the trajectory of the diriliş theme from the 1960s until today. I show its popularization process, its politicization throughout decades, and its gendered foundation. Diriliş theme appears and disappears at significant political moments in Turkey, and it successfully appeals to Turkish-Islamist groups while converting feelings of oppression to power and domination. Its loaded history makes diriliş a very powerful instrument for AKP’s populism.