Page 246 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

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Fig. 11.2. Yasar Nuri Öztürk: Superstar of white Islam?

against the secularist (conservative) establishment, with vested interest in main-
taining the status quo. 11
Within this increasingly polarized cultural-cum-political scene of the late
1990s in Turkey, Yasar Nuri Öztürk has emerged as a crusader for a Kemalist-
modernist version of Islam in Turkey. He is, in this sense, “the superstar of
White Islam” (to directly quote the weekly Aktuel, January 1998). But as I try
to demonstrate below, matters are somewhat more complicated than this. For
on commercial television, which has become the primary arena of endless de-
bate about who “we” are and what “our” culture is, Yasar Nuri Öztürk, even
when he draws upon and articulates the cultural themes and symbolic link-
ages of Kemalist-modernist Islam, recasts them in a different mold. Before pro-
ceeding further, therefore, I will attempt to provide a “close-up” of Yasar Nuri
Öztürk by focusing on a particular “talk show” program where he has been a
regular participant for more than ¤ve years. This will allow me to discuss, in the
last section of this chapter, how his polemical style and assertions have (re)poli-
ticized, in the public realm, a series of explosive issues that have (re)divided
Turkey’s Muslims.

Becoming “Secular Muslims” 235