Ülkücü söylemde dini milliyetçiliğin doğuşu ve yükselişi, 1969-1980

This dissertation investigates the ideological evolution of the Ülkücü movement from 1969 until 1980, emphasizing its gradual evolution from Turkish nationalism enriched with instrumental Islamic sources to a fully articulated religious nationalist discourse. Through a discourse analysis of core Ülkücü-affiliated journals published between 1969 and 1980, this dissertation argues that Islam, which initially functioned as a legitimizing repertoire of nationalist ideology, increasingly became the primary frame for thinking politics, society, and identity. Adopting Barbara-Ann Rieffer's typology of "instrumental pious nationalism" and "religious nationalism," the dissertation identifies that the Ülkücü movement evolved from the strategic use of Islamic symbols to an Islamic social and political order drawn from divine sources. This reorientation did not have any top-down or purely strategic character. Even as Nationalist Action Party (MHP) leader Alparslan Türkeş embraced Islamic themes for electoral legitimacy, Islamic content proliferation remained largely at the initiative of grassroots Ülkü Ocakları (Idealist Hearths) actors. These actors, often very devout, reinterpreted the ideological confrontation with the left as a sacred cause—a cihad—with fallen members as martyrs and communism as part of an international materialist front ranged against Islam. By the late 1970s, Islam had become the ideological foundation of Ülkücü identity and vision, defining the movement as vanguard of Muslim Turkish revivalism. This dissertation makes a contribution to religious nationalism scholarship as it provides a complex example of how nationalist and religious discourses become entangled at times of political crisis, ideological division, and mass mobilization.