1980 Military Coup d’état and the Rise of Religious Politics in Türkiye: The Originators of 2000’s Türkiye
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Abstract
Even though religion-based politics dated back to the inception the Republic, particularly in recent three decades, Turkish politics witnessed a gradual rise of religious activism and politics. Interestingly, one may discern that the military coup d’état of 1980 and the policy espoused by the military regime between 1980-1983 was the very heart of these movements. The world context on the eve of the military coup and its timing gives important traces the reasons laying behind the coup. Among many, one of the important reasons was neoliberal turn which the regime wanted to keep up with and entrenched in the country. Then, religious politics gradually gained strength, by means of internal and external factors, thus a more religious politics became visible in the 1990s and culminated in 2000s in Türkiye. In this study, increasing religious activism and politics in the Turkish case was researched and was tried to set forth basic factors caused this visible phenomenon. Results clearly showed that, in line with democratization wave after the collapse of the Soviet Union, neoliberal economic system played a determiner role for increasing religious politics in Türkiye.
