Introduction
Populism appears to be the zeitgeist of our contemporary global political landscape and thus inevitably triggered new literature around its content, power, and economic and political background. While populism’s place in both right-wing and left-wing politics should be acknowledged (Todorova, 2023), the toolkit of right-wing populism still requires scrutinizing to grasp the appeal of today’s politics of emotions, resentments, and imagination by the larger publics. This report is written based on two premises: that rising populism across the globe rely heavily on elements beyond the rational, and its motivations require scrutiny. Second, in making sense of populist reasoning, local references are to be analyzed more comprehensively and in connection with cosmologies, beliefs, and vocabularies. It is based on those elements that gain various forms of populist movements’ power that they can turn the existing themes, narratives, symbols, and myths already existent in the collective psyches of their base/potential followership into political currencies. In the history of Turkey’s politics, right-wing parties like Democrat Party (DP), Justice Party (AP), and Motherland Party (ANAP) resorted to populist rhetoric as well (Çınar, 2023). However, it is plausible to argue that very little of the populist rhetoric they circulated became as mainstream and popular as diriliş. In this report, I specifically focus on the “diriliş” (resurrection) theme to provide an overview of its historical changes and shifts while highlighting the centrality and importance of masculinist elements in its formation and success.
The diriliş theme is visible in national politics, foreign policy, media, fiction, and the intellectual realm. As I will discuss in more detail below, it was a recurring theme in the Islamic revivalist movement of the 1980s, which was reflected in the literary productions of the Islamist intelligentsia, but later, it proliferated to the larger public with the rise of political Islam in Turkey. Diriliş is not an ideology but a functional theme that emerges, disappears, and reemerges at significant political moments in Turkey. By following the trajectory of this theme from the margins of different Islamist circles to the center of Turkey’s politics, I will show that in contemporary Turkey, diriliş has reemerged as a driving force of contemporary populist discourse under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and became instrumentalized as a catalyst for appealing to specific affects that are engraved in Islamist as well as conservative subjectivities. Although the link between populist discourses and political effects has been widely discussed, the notion of discourse becomes an empty signifier when its specifics are not scrutinized. The success of populist discourses in powerfully cultivating specific effects is closely linked with its possession of a distinct fervor that goes beyond mere rhetoric. These discourses can ignite excitement, galvanize communities, and inspire action. As a theme that constantly resurfaces in specific moments in the history of political Islam in Turkey, the diriliş theme is also loaded with emotions, meanings, and imaginaries. As I will demonstrate in this report, the notion of diriliş not only triggers certain emotions but also cultivates ready feelings that are present in people’s imaginaries and, therefore, could easily be provoked. Diriliş carries the potential to build and harness hope within oppressed generations in Turkey, and in doing so, it opens a platform in which political Islam can be constructed by drawing upon existing cosmologies and nationalist sentiments.
The resurgence of the diriliş theme is intertwined with the global rise of right-wing populism and its connection to postcolonial history. From the 19th century onwards, former imperial powers collapsed under Western colonialism. The lost empires of the past gave birth to postcolonial sentiments of unease, defeat, and resentment in the 20th century (Bargu, 2021; Sehlikoglu, 2021; Tokdoğan, 2018). Today’s global populism almost exclusively appeals to these emotions. While building their populist rhetoric by cultivating affects that were accumulated throughout the 20th century, they tend to skip the era of defeat and rewrite their national histories by treating this as a period of break or sleep. The Islamist idea of diriliş follows this thread of neo-imperial thinking.
In this report, I will lay out the history of the diriliş theme in Turkey through its appearance, disappearance, and reappearance in intellectual, mediatic, and political sources and platforms. Most prominently known from Sezai Karakoç’s work in the Turkish Islamic literary tradition, “Resurrection” (Diriliş) occupies an important position in the populist rhetoric of political Islam in contemporary Turkey. The popularisation of the Turkish TV show Diriliş Ertuğrul (2014–2019), both in and beyond Turkey’s borders, familiarised different publics with the concept of diriliş. However, the velocity of this popularisation is precisely a result of the existing reference points in the Islamist, more specifically, Turkish Sunni-Islamist imaginary. Although this theme existed among the Islamic intelligentsia in Turkey, it failed to spread to the grassroots until the 2000s. I show that with the rise of political Islam in Turkey, diriliş philosophy was revisited and proliferated by Turkish-Islamist populist politics.
This report will chart a chronological journey of the diriliş theme from the 1960s until today. The report is divided into historical periods based on the emergence and reemergence of this theme. In each section, I will discuss the historical background that triggers this theme's resurfacing. I will first look at Islamist journals frequently using this theme in their work. By investigating the İslamcı Dergiler Projesi (IDP) database with a particular focus on the keyword Diriliş, I provide an overview of the journals, articles, and genres around this theme from the 1960s until 2023. Secondly, I focus on the well-known usage of this keyword in politics and popular culture under AKP government. In doing so, I will also highlight the gendered structure of this notion and provide some insights into the fundamentally masculine characteristics of this populist theme. By laying out this chronology, I demonstrate a clear shift in the theme of diriliş from the intellectual realm to the political realm and delve into the popularization and politicization of this theme in Turkey. Finally, I will make a conceptual discussion about this term itself to grasp its gendered signification economy.
1960s
Although its intellectual history can be traced back to the late Ottoman Empire, the popularisation of the diriliş theme in the cultural and intellectual realm is primarily visible through the Islamist journal Diriliş. The journal was published between 1960 and 1992 and edited by Sezai Karakoç and Hüsnü Gündüz. Following the line of Turkish-Islamist intelligentsia like Necip Fazıl Kısakürek and Mehmet Akif Ersoy, the journal published 392 issues on politics, society, literature, and history (Karakoç & Gündüz, 1960–1992). Although the journal’s publication ended in 1992, another journal, Diriliş Saati (Resurrection Time), edited by Osman Çil, started its publication life in 2003 until 2018 with an interest in similar topics from the lens of Islamist thought.
The beginning date of this journal marks a critical period in Turkey’s history. After transitioning to the multiparty system, the Democrat Party (DP) and its leader, Adnan Menderes, remained in power for ten years between 1950 and 1960. As the first right-wing and conservative party in Republican history comprised of cadres formed in opposition to the secular policies of the Turkish state and the Republican People’s Party (CHP), DP was the first political arena where Islamist ideas could gain visibility in Turkish politics. Menderes became a prominent figure for conservative and Islamist publics and enacted many right-wing populist policies, such as lifting the ban on Arabic calls for prayer (Köse & Selçuk, 2021). The ever-growing visibility of the anti-secular, pro-religious reactions to the Turkish state under the leadership of Menderes alarmed the Turkish army, and the 10-year DP government ended with the 1960 military coup, followed by the execution of Prime Minister Adnan Menderes. The 1960s also marked the rise of the Turkish left, where major left-wing parties such as the Turkish Communist Party (TKP) and Turkish Worker’s Party (TİP) were established. The rise of the left subsequently triggered the anti-communist stance, which became the cornerstone of right-wing politics.
The critique of secular modernization and anti-communist rhetoric is a fundamental part of Islamist intellectual thought in Turkey, reified in the works of figures like Necip Fazıl Kısakürek (Köse & Selçuk, 2021). Nonetheless, the 1960s became the first building block of the popularisation of the idea of diriliş in Sunni Islamists’ intellectual imagination. The execution of Menderes as the first leader of the Islamist-conservative right in Turkey is remembered as a significant moment in Turkish history. The DP period gave the center-right relative confidence, and the period ending with Menderes’s execution and DP’s shutdown resulted in a big disappointment and fear (Tokdoğan, 2018). Menderes’s death is recalled as a defeat and almost a trauma, a scar that has been opened at the hands of the secular, Westernized, Kemalist state. The post-DP period was characterized by the revival of Ottoman nostalgia, which was instrumentalized by right-wing parties following DP and later became a significant tool to fight the rising left (2018, 41). Therefore, the Islamist diriliş idea could be seen to first flourish in the intellectual realm through the confidence it gained by the revival of center-right in Turkish politics.
The Islamist diriliş idea that is discussed here refers to an inherently Turkish one, calling for the resurgence of Turkish-Islamism rather than the resurgence of an abstract ummah. It finds its legitimacy through the imagined power and glory of the Ottoman Empire. It imagines a homogenous empire, exempt from heterogenous ethnic or racial groups and inner-class antagonisms. Therefore, following the 1960s, Islamic revivalism became even more Turkified and irrevocably intertwined with Turkish identity after the 1980s military coup.
1980s – 90s
The publishing activities of various Islamist groups in Turkey increased, especially in the second half of the 1980s, in parallel with domestic socio-political dynamics and the political debate and revitalization observed in Muslim countries (Öztan, 2020). When we look at the IDP database, 1988 stands out as one of the peak years of publications with the keyword diriliş. Following this period, the Diriliş journal, edited by Sezai Karakoç and Hüsnü Gündüz, ended its publishing life entirely. The significant number of publications in 1988 is not surprising because the 1980s is also identified as the revival period of Islamists in Turkey (2020, 644). Between the 1990s and 2000s, there were limited publications on this theme. This is a striking absence, considering that the 1990s was a moment of political upheaval for various Islamist groups in Turkey. This absence indicates that with the rise of political Islam, a political space is carved up, enabling the diriliş philosophy to shift from the intellectual and literary field to the political field.
The 1980s until the beginning of the 1990s marks what is widely known as the period of Islamic revivalism. After the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, Islamist groups with different political orientations started to become more visible and outspoken in the public realm. Islamist groups, which went underground during the founding years of the Turkish Republic, organized themselves around nationalist-conservative demands in multi-party life and established relations with center-right politics at various levels to gain strength (2020, 645). The 1980s military coup crushed the rising left of the 1970s and expanded the space of right-wing politics. Also, the neoliberal restoration period Turkey underwent after the 1980s military coup enabled Islamist groups to benefit from this economic restructuring, therefore expanding not only their political but also economic area of activity. The high number of publications in 1988 indicates how the political and economic restructuring period in Turkey also gave pace to Islamist intellectual production. The Islamist diriliş theme is widely discussed intellectually in this period but also shifted towards the political realm in the 1990s.
2000 – 2010s
Numerous other journals with different names show a similar interest in the diriliş theme from the 2000s until today. Some topics examined through the diriliş lens are The East, the city, the nation, and the civilization. The convergence of these themes reflects the Islamist intelligentsia interest in offering an alternative modernization and nationalism to the Western-oriented modernity of the secular elite. It was no longer fashionable to follow the West, but rather, the critique of Western modernity and the search for an “authentic culture” was on the rise. Islamist intellectuals selectively made use of Western post-modern critique to challenge the Western hegemony, and Ottoman-Turkish modernization was rediscussed through a critique of secular Turkish modernity (2020, 646).
After 2000, there are publications focusing on the philosophy of “diriliş”; however, up until the 2010s, they are limited. After the 2010s, the publication of books, articles, literary work, and research gains pace. Between 2013–2022, ten research articles, six fictional books, two history, four theology, one biography, one poetry, one research, and one children’s book are published with the keyword diriliş (IDP, 1960–2023). Especially research articles and philosophical books primarily reexamine Sezai Karakoç’s work. There are over 273 texts with the keyword diriliş, and like in 1988, the publications are concentrated in 2013. After 2013, both publications and the diversity of genres increased compared to the pre-2010 period.
From 2000 to the 2010s, political Islam lived its heyday with the AKP’s majority win in 2002 elections. Although AKP proclaimed itself as the representative of “moderate Islamism” by excluding radical Islamist ideas from state policies and happily marrying neoliberalism and political Islam, this mildness started to decline over the course of this decade. Although mild in political discourse, AKP’s rise in power was supported by its organic links to the Islamist movements in Turkey, the most prominent being the Gülenist movement led by Fetullah Gülen. Throughout the 2000s, Gülenists set up their cadres in state institutions with the support of the AKP government. The gradual replacement of secular state establishment with officials raised and trained in Islamist communities reflected on public life as an ever-increasing Islamization. Islamization of state structures, accompanied by the construction-led neoliberal policies of AKP, shrunk public spaces, weakened the welfare state, and eroded fundamental human rights.
The emergence and snowball effect of the Gezi Park protests coincides with this rapid Islamization in state structures and civil society. Gezi protests are a response to the confident palazlanma of Islamization, which first attacked basic human rights, freedom, and equality and later demonized the justified demand for democratic life that came from diverse segments of society. Palazlanma1 appears as the right word to describe the Islamization of state structures in Turkey. As state structures got more filled with members of Islamic cults such as the Gülenists, political Islam started to live its heyday. The collaboration between the AKP government and Gülenists led many state officials and AKP supporters to gain more wealth and confidence (Tee, 2021). Political Islam grew thicker became more assertive, greedier, and more arrogant. Later, it started to attack any voice that challenged that newly claimed power. At the peak of this rapid Islamization, the Gezi movement posed an important challenge to the attack on democratic rights and constructed a new democratic imaginary for diverse oppositional voices. The AKP government’s counterattack reframed democratic demands as a malignant and deliberate attack on the resurrection of the Turkish nation under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. This repackaging was best symbolized by the election video2 aired by AKP in the first local elections right after the Gezi Park movement (T.C. Cumhurbaşkanlığı, 2017). A mysterious guy in black approaches the giant flagpole and sabotages the pulley holding the Turkish flag. Like a call from the prophet, we hear the Turkish national anthem vocalized by Erdoğan’s voice, and as he starts to speak, thousands of people rush to resurrect the falling flag. A populist divide gets established via this video by marking two different groups within the borders of the nation: those who sabotage the flag and those who rush to its rescue. From this period onwards, we observe that the Diriliş theme is frequently instrumentalized to reinforce and reify this divide.
On May 28, 2013, the Gezi Park protests started with the resistance of a few environmental activists to the reconstruction of Topçu Barracks at Gezi Park, which is one of the few remaining green areas at the center of highly urbanized Istanbul. AKP government insisted on the reconstruction project, which resulted in a mass political upheaval, uniting people from different ideological engagements under the umbrella of opposition to the AKP government’s increasingly anti-democratic domination and neoliberal policies. The reconstruction of Topçu Barracks was a perfect example of the AKP government’s neoliberal and neoconservative urban projects. Historical Topçu Barracks was the place where Abdülhamid II, supporting pro-Sharia upheaval, was defeated by Operation Army under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and this event later led to Abdülhamid II’s dethronement, becoming the symbol of the treason of secular elites and subsequent downfall of Islam in the contemporary neo-Ottomanist imaginary (Tokdoğan, 2018). Therefore, Topçu Barracks was not only a profitable urban project but also a space that had historical significance in the Islamist imaginary, or at least, its relevance was selectively highlighted after the mass influence of the Gezi Park protests.
Gezi Park protests posed a threat to the AKP government’s increasing anti-democratic and conservative domination, as well as Islamization and conservatisation of public life. The aftermath of the Gezi Park movement marked the beginning of intensifying governmental pressure. The polarization between pro-Erdoğan groups and the opposition also gained momentum after 2013, and the Islamist/conservative vs. secular/leftist/progressive dichotomy deepened. From 2013 until today, Erdoğan’s and AKP’s populism fundamentally bases itself on a self-proclaimed “local and national” (yerli ve milli) us, excluding and criminalizing any opposition it deems as immoral, Western, traitor, terrorist “them”. This polarization is reflected in the cultural and literary realm, diriliş reappeared as a response to democratic demands and backlash of anti-Erdoğan and anti-AKP publics after 2013 up until today.
Post-2010s
After the 2010s, the diriliş theme started to become much more mainstream. Especially the local and global success of the Turkish TV series Diriliş Ertuğrul (2014–2019) familiarized this notion with the non-Islamist mainstream publics and, in doing so, blended popular culture with history for political purposes (Carney, 2018). The historical period Diriliş Ertuğrul takes place in, and the protagonist it puts at the center shows continuity with the selective rewriting of neo-Ottomanist narratives under Erdoğan’s leadership. Ertuğrul Gazi is the father of the Ottoman Empire's founder Osman Gazi. The story focuses on the destruction of the Kayı tribe by Mongols and the leader Ertuğrul Gazi’s diriliş to power. Erdoğan and AKP’s rise to power also becomes a representation of “the diriliş of Turkish greatness” (2018, 100). Choosing the father of the father of Ottoman Empire as a protagonist shows a search for an archaic paternal legitimacy that can strengthen Erdoğan’s neo-Ottomanist claim to Turkish-Islamist leadership. Erdoğan becomes the contemporary embodiment of the historic figure Ertuğrul’s resurrection of Turkish greatness. In addition, Erdoğan’s leadership gains an even deeper legitimacy with Ertuğrul’s reimagination as the creator of an imperial legacy based on Turkish-Muslim power. In doing so, even after a long 600-year multi-ethnic and multi-religious and almost a 100-year republic, Erdoğan’s leadership is presented as the legitimate successor of Turkish-Islamic leadership through channeling his power to an archaic paternal figure.
In 2015, Diriliş Postası (Resurrection Post) started its publication life as an outspoken Islamist and pro-government newspaper. Its website declares that its publication principles are solely based on Islam, highlighting that “Like everything written by humans, laws are open to change. Diriliş Post accepts Islam as a reference by commenting on all human variables, especially laws”. Furthermore, it states that it does not “justify, normalize or beautify haram”, to emphasize what seems to be its critique of other publishers and journalists (Diriliş Postası, 2015). It also defines its political stance as anti-imperialist, against any kind of -ism, anti-nuclear, anti-alcohol/drugs, anti-racist, and anti-adultery by clearly distinguishing itself from “the West” and embracing universal humanism only to the extent that is compatible with Turkish-Islam majoritarianism. Established by Ali Yıldız and Mehmet Akosman, Diriliş Post is another product of the restructured media landscape under AKP.
The July 15, 2016, coup attempt marked the beginning of the popularization of the notion of diriliş in national politics. President Erdoğan’s call for his supporters to fight against the Gülenist coup attempt and the subsequent failure of the coup resulted in the identification of the AKP government’s victory as the “diriliş ruhu” (resurrection spirit). Gülenist’s infiltration of state structures was only possible through Erdoğan’s alliance with the movement’s leader. Nonetheless, the post-coup narrative of Erdoğan was solely based on being deceived, betrayed, and the inevitable compensation Gülenists faced through the vengeful diriliş of the people. After the coup attempt, state led TRT channel broadcasted the “From Coup Attempt to Diriliş: The Anatomy of July 15” documentary to solidify this populist narrative around July 15 (TRT, 2017).
Turkish army’s history of numerous coups in the name of the protection of the Republican regime became a perfect ground for the AKP government to expand its populist narrative in the post-2016 era. “The people” who resurrected against the “traitors” within were up against not only the Gülenists but also anyone who was challenging the “national will” that was craving for democracy. This overarching national will resurfaced through Erdoğan’s prophetic call for democracy. This populist narrative led to the repackaging of the power clashes within the state as a new chapter in democracy and the Turkish people’s diriliş from an anti-democratic sleep enforced by the older regime. The populist narrative is told and displayed to reconstruct and solidify this selective memory. July 15 Memory Museum at the corner of the renamed July 15 Martyrs Bridge (formerly Bosphorus Bridge) exhibits visuals and items from that night to reify the “resurrection spirit”, and the process of mythologizing July 15, 2016, continues today through annual celebrations, becoming markers of “New Turkey”.
As the Diriliş theme gained more popularity through popular culture and national political discourse, we can see that it also began to become a part of Turkish foreign policy. For instance, President Erdoğan welcomed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2015 by displaying 16 Turkic warriors in the new presidential palace in Ankara (AGP, 2015). Similarly, Erdoğan welcomed President of Azerbaijan İlham Aliyev in 2015 with a ceremony where 16 Turkic nations were represented by soldiers carrying flags and wearing uniforms. Aliyev’s welcoming ceremony was also accompanied by the Diriliş Anthem, supposedly an old Turkic anthem, and the generic song of the TV show (Bianet, 2015). A similar linkage between the show’s popularity and foreign policy continues in 2018. For example, Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro wears the hat “bork” and holds the Kayi flag associated with the series and poses for the camera (AA, 2018). Overall, the show’s popularity, which has a place in the historical imagination of global audiences, is instrumentalized by the AKP government to mythologize the Turkic-Ottoman history. History is rewritten to legitimize Turkey’s leadership claims among the Turkic and Muslim nations of the Global South.
Erdoğan’s constant emphasis on the TV show’s success and the sensitivity around the critiques towards this show is striking in understanding what this success signifies for the government. Erdoğan praised the show’s success (Topçu, 2019) and visited the set when the show was still airing. The show was not only praised, but those who mocked it were sued. For instance, in 2021, a journalist critiqued neo-Ottomanist shows like Diriliş Ertuğrul and Kuruluş Osman on Twitter, and he was later taken into custody. Similarly, TV host Okan Bayülgen mocked the show and later had to publicly apologize (Birgün, 2016). AKP government’s sensitivity around the critiques towards this show appears to be closely related to its fragility in a field that is difficult to “conquer”, namely the field of cultural production. Erdoğan’s statements about the inability to dominate the field of cultural production even though they’ve been ruling for over two decades account for this fragility (Hacaloğlu, 2017). The show does have international success, especially in post-Ottoman geographies, as well as among nationalist and conservative groups in Turkey. However, AKP does not have a cultural hegemony over a multiplicity of local media audiences and is unable to conquer the media consumption practices of secular, intellectual, and other anti-AKP audiences. Although the AKP government has a strong hold over media channels in Turkey and strict censorship practices through the Radio and TV Supreme Council (RTÜK), the diversity of digital platforms and other online media enables cultural producers to resist the media-led hegemony of AKP.
Masculinity and Diriliş
The appeal of the diriliş theme among various Islamist and conservative masses inevitably raises the question of masculinity and its role in the popularization of diriliş. The idea of diriliş refers to a fundamentally glorious act that leads the subject to regain power. This imagined act shares strong symbolic resemblances with the act of kiyam and an erect phallus. The former is grasped by educated pious Sunnis, and the latter by much larger populations within and beyond Turkey. Kiyam is the standing posture during prayer, which begins the prayer (namaz) and is followed by secde when a praying Muslim's head reaches the ground. This symbolic reference was quite common in the 1990s during Islamic revivalism, although it lost its vogue after 2000. After 2000, as soon as Islamist intelligentsia started joining the center-right, the diriliş gained a noticeably masculine tone.
One of Erdoğan’s statements during Turkey’s military intervention in Afrin, Syria, in 2018 best grasps the masculinist boast embedded in diriliş. As a justification of the military intervention, Erdoğan highlighted that Turkey is on the eve of a “new diriliş”. His reference to the nation’s ongoing diriliş from a symbolic death under his leadership also came along with an emphasis on avenging the symbolic castration the nation has endured;
“This is the resurrection of a nation from the ashes. What is done to us through terrorist organizations is like cutting the beard of our nation. However, they do not know that when we take action, we destroy those terrorists completely and break the arms and wings of the structure they are working hard to build. The cut beard will grow thicker, but the arms and wings will not come back." (Bianet, 2018)
In this gendered narrative, symbolized through cutting the beard, the nation has the power to castrate the enemy, to defeat their hard-built structures by rendering them permanently impotent. In contrast, the enemy’s attempts to castrate the nation will only make it stronger. Therefore, diriliş is also a phallic event, symbolizing an erection after enforced impotence by enemies within and outside the borders. Turkey’s militarist interventions are for the sake of resurrecting the nation from some kind of sleep, i.e., impotence.
The “new Turkey” is the heart and brain of the resurrected old civilization, namely the former Ottoman Empire and its particularly Sunni Muslim Turkish population. It is envisioned as powerful, expansionist, militarist, neoliberal, and aggressive in national and international politics. Therefore, Resurrected Turkey is assertive and entirely masculinist in its vision and actions. It is stripped of any kind of characteristics that are deemed feminine. Non-assertive politics such as peace, negotiation, democracy, and coalition do not have a place in the New Turkey. The future is envisioned through an assertive existence, only through defeating the enemies within and beyond.
Conceptual discussion
Diriliş is not a consistent, linear, and ever-growing ideology but a specific affective rhetoric that successfully appeals to the specific histories and emotions that stick to the Turkish-Islamist imaginary. Especially Erdoğan-led populist Islamism is successful in using the diriliş theme to bridge the history of the oppressed “Sunni Muslim underdog” with today’s victorious political Islamism under Erdoğan. When we question what Turkey is resurrecting from, we see that new Turkey is resurrecting from its imagined postcolonial situation, which is not enforced upon Turkey by colonial powers but rather by the secular Republican elite and their successors. Here, diriliş might appear as an ascendancy from a symbolic death, however, diriliş is not analogous with a phoenix-like revival. Rather, diriliş signifies a state of sleep where the sleeping body grows thicker, stronger, and vengeful towards those who put it into sleep. The sleeping body is not static, rather, it is cocooning and waiting for the right moment to rise gloriously. Diriliş does not have a linear temporality. Instead, it has a cyclical time frame, akin to the Islamic understanding of death.
The kind of rising “diriliş” refers to is best described by the Turkish word şahlanmak. The Persian root of this word şah means ruler or leader, and the verb şahlanmak signifies “rising to power”. Those who “rise to power” are unstoppable because they are provoked, and their inner power is unleashed. The term is also used as şaha kaldırmak, which provokes the horse to raise its front feet to the sky. So, once the cocooning body is resurrected from its sleep, the next thing it does is şahlanmak, rising to power. This rise to power is a fundamentally masculinist one. The symbols of the powerful Turkish masculinist mythos are at, avrat, ve silah, (horse, women, and weapon). Only Turkish men who possess all three can be powerful. The resurrected body ought to possess all three and regain its honor by avenging those that rendered him impotent. If politics of resentment and victimhood under AKP appealed to the “impotent” past of “Old Turkey”, the proliferation of diriliş signifies the glory and vengeful victory of a particular Islamism under Erdoğan and AKP.
Conclusion
In this report, by putting the diriliş theme at the center, I intended to lay out tangible and intangible elements that bring right-wing populism to life. Populist rhetoric’s appeal is intertwined with the political unconscious of a particular group and the geopolitical cosmologies it draws from. Diriliş is an important theme for the Turkish-Islamist imaginary, and it has been successful in harnessing feelings of defeat and oppression among Islamist and conservative masses and transforming them into power.
Ethics and consent
Ethical approval and consent were not required.
Data availability
The data for this article consists of bibliographic references, which are included in the References section.
Acknowledgements
I want to express my gratitude to the PI of the Takhayyul Project, Dr. Sertaç Sehlikoğlu, for encouraging me to write this report and for her endless feedback. I wrote this report as part of the ERC-funded Takhayyul project, and I want to thank both the European Research Commission and my team members at the Takhayyul Project. Finally, many thanks to EU Open Access for providing a publication venue for this report.
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