Politicization, radicalization and moderation: The construction of repertoires of action in Turkish and Tunisian islamist youth

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b2578890_(Table of contents)

This thesis demonstrates the patterns of interaction between social movements and explains politicization, radicalization, and moderation as possible results. By focusing on the early trajectories of Tunisian Islamist youth between 1970-1987 and Turkish Islamist youth between 1965-1979, this comparative historical analysis underlines the impact of confrontation and competition with rival ideological currents on the repertoire of action of these movements. Politicization refers to a multifaceted collective learning process that a social group experiences while becoming a movement (Curnow, Davis, and Asher 2018). Radicalization and moderation mostly refer to the acceptance and rejection of violence as a method for political action (Karakaya and Yıldırım 2013; Snow and Cross 2012). Both movements experience politicization through competition and confrontation with their ideological counterparts, the leftist youth in particular. The analysis of the Tunisian Islamist youth movement concludes that state repression leads to radicalization through harming the organizational structure of the Tunisian Islamist movement, which increases the use of violence by Islamist students on campuses. The analysis of Turkish Islamist youth concludes that a violent environment can catalyze radicalization for some elements of social movements without significant state repression, as in the case of Akıncılar, while moderation is a likely outcome of institutional limitations, as in the case of MTTB.