ABSTRACT
Sporting arenas have become backdrops to the main drama, whose various actors fill and empty the theatre, bringing their own props with them. The state too takes advantage of its size to organize rallies on the Republic’s official holidays, rallies as carefully choreographed as Refah’s at the same venue. Hicret Gecesi is just one example then of a whole series of rallies, meetings, commemorations, protests, entertainment and exhibitions that carnival Islamism organizes to assert its legitimacy as an alternative order to the present regime. Carnival Islamism’s effect, paradoxically, is to strip bare these extras of their Islamist gestures and affectations in their everyday lives. Carnival Islamism is not content to put on a show for whoever comes; in demanding that the comers themselves become the show carnival Islamism makes carnival Islamists. The carnival Islamism of Istanbul has, in contrast, effected a separation of the laicist and Islamic strands of this discourse.
