The National Outlook Movement's vision of capitalist society in Turkey (1968-1980)

Abstract

As the first openly Islamist movement in the Turkish legal political scene, the National Outlook Movement came into existence with the foundation of the National Order Party under Necmettin Erbakan’s leadership in 1970 and, over time, became the symbol of the transformation of Islamism into a bona fide political movement. The movement attempted to produce an anti-capitalist and anti-establishment discourse so as to address the demands of those who felt excluded by the capitalist transformation experienced by Turkey in the late 1940s and 1950s, which led to major changes in the political and socioeconomic fabric. Aside from not a few genuine critiques of capitalism, its economic and social program in the 1970s formulated as “moral and material development” is very similar to capitalism in terms of proposed solutions. For instance, private ownership of the means of production and private property, which were the inherent logic of capitalism, were flatly defended on the basis of the assumption that Islam already recognizes these “rights”. Concordantly, while the concept of interest, defined as “non-labor earning”, is evidently rejected, other forms of unethical beneficiaries such as working for some-one else, hiring of wage labor and income from rent and trade are not condemned. Moreover, owing to the merchant identity of the prophet of Islam, it feels a special admiration for commerce as well as merchants. Parallel to this, since the very beginning, it has attempted to be an enthusiastic supporter of these small and medium-sized capital-owning class against big industrialists. In that regard, during the 1970s the two political parties of the National Outlook Movement refrained from pressing an anti-establishment or anti-capitalism stance, choosing rather to serve as eager proponents of capitalism without mentioning its name.