Halil Ibrahim Yenigün

Wednesday, 19 October 2016, 5.00 pm - 6.30 pm |
Forum Transregionale Studien, Wallotstr. 14, 14193 Berlin

The July 15 Failed Coup and the Demise of 'Islamic Democracy' in Turkey

Halil Ibrahim Yenigün
(Istanbul / EUME Fellow 2016/17)

Comment: Asef Bayat
(University of Illinois / Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin 2016/17)

Chair: Georges Khalil
(Forum Transregionale Studien / EUME)

Abstract
Overcoming various binaries of the earlier decades such as religious reactionaries vs. secular progressives, many policy makers and scholars got heavily invested in the promise of an ‘Islamic Democracy’ in Turkey in the 2000s. An AKP-Gülen marriage, blessed by the Euro-American power-elite, was accordingly hailed as a successful case of Islamic democracy led by ‘good Muslims,’ code-named by several labels ranging from ‘moderate Muslims’ to ‘moderate Islamists’ and ‘post-Islamists.’ Eventually the Turkish model received its proper honors in the mainstream media as a template that integrated ‘Islam, democracy, and vibrant economics’ that supposedly became an operational formula for the whole Middle East after the Arab Spring and ‘the envy of the Arab world.’

Having witnessed an already three-year long unsightly and bloody divorce of the ‘moderate Islam’s two Turkish partners that pinnacled in the July 15 coup attempt, has the ‘Islamic democracy project’ proven an utter failure? What went wrong with Turkey’s ‘moderate Muslims’? The presentation will broach this debate and it will probe whether, in the aftermath of July 15th, any intellectual attempt can salvage the Islamic democracy project, either politically or intellectually. Or should we give in to the temptation that secularist fears of a hidden agenda have simply proven true and Islamists in all their modified versions are hopelessly undemocratic?

Halil Ibrahim Yenigün is a former Assistant Professor at Istanbul Commerce University, who was dismissed in February 2016 as a result of his signature on the Petition for Peace. He has also worked in the POMEAS (Project on the Middle East and Arab Spring) at Sabancı University’s Istanbul Policy Center. His research is focused on political ontology, political theology, and contemporary Muslim political thought. More recently, he is also researching religious social movements and youth movements in Turkey and Egypt. He received his PhD in 2013 from the University of Virginia's (UVA) political theory program. From 2006 to 2010, he was the managing editor of the American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS). He spent the academic year 2007-8 as a Malone & Gallatin research fellow at the American University in Cairo (AUC). Apart from his academic articles, Yenigün also gave interviews to newspapers and magazines in Turkey about the contemporary Muslim political thought, Turkish Islamism, and Turkish democracy.
Following his dismissal, Yenigün gave several invited lectures at North American universities on the current state of Turkish academia and democracy. He is also involved in several NGOs in Turkey, which work on human rights, social justice issues, and free circulation of ideas.

Asef Bayat is a Catherine and Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the Department of Sociology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before joining Illinois, Bayat taught at the American University in Cairo for many years, and served as the director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) holding the Chair of Society and Culture of the Modern Middle East at Leiden University, The Netherlands. In the meantime, he had visiting positions at the Universality of California, Berkeley, Colombia University, Oxford, and Brown. Currently, he is a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Halil Ibrahim Yenigün

Halil Ibrahim Yenigün

The July 15 Failed Coup and the Demise of 'Islamic Democracy' in Turkey

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