Erdogan talks with the Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation at the end of the 13th summit, in Istanbul, on April 15, 2016. Xinhua/SIPA USA/Press Association. All rights reserved. Whether the Justice and Development Party (JDP) would one day establish an Islamic state or a sharia system has long been a debate in Turkey. Erdogan has repeatedly denied any such plans, until recently. However, now that liberal policies seem to have been abandoned, secular schools turned into religious schools, many Faculties of Theology have been opened and Erdogan has put out a clear call for a "pious generation", could a sharia revolution be under way?
A major challenge faced by all religious and ideological groups is, of course, the problem of how to impose their own values on the society they live in. Which theory of social change, among the sociological classifications of evolutionist, equilibrist or conflict models, might a religious-ideological grouping select as a way forward? Islamist groups often regard the control of political power as a prerequisite for social change. This mindset requires absolute dominance of the state in domains such as the economy, education, religion, family and culture, including all the hegemonic (ideological) devices that enable them to evolve society “in a just and Islamic way”. This elitist theory, which assumes top-down change of society by the state, implicitly assumes that the individual is passive.
Gramsci, the Italian socialist, thinker and activist, took a different approach to social change models. In his critique of Mussolini’s fascism he discussed various methods of socialization with his comrades that shed light on some current issues in Turkey. Gramsci, who spent a considerable part of his short life in jail, argued that it wasn’t possible to control a society purely through political, military and economic means. According to him, every society is under the cultural hegemony of particular elites. Society is integrated into the system by means of some “force”, but more often, "persuasion" or "domination". In today's societies, this seamless integration predominantly consists of a popular or consumer culture.
