This paper examines Islamist political commentary on the Arab Spring produced by activist-intellectuals affiliated with the Islamist non-governmental organization (NGO) ozgur-Der and the monthly Haksoz in Turkey. Contemporary Islamist intellectual discourses have often been studied instrumentally by scholars as providing a window onto Islamist (party) politics, almost always discussed in relation to Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP) rule. Against this background, I explore the understudied political-theoretic significance of this intellectual activism by focusing on the interpretative practices that underpin Islamist theses on the political present. I argue that reading the Arab Spring as a Qutbian event, as do Hamza Turkmen and fellow activists at ozgur-Der, is productive of political effects that entail the continual (re)invention of an Islamic revivalist canon of thought in Turkey as "our" past, Qutb as native, and the reading public as authentically Islamic. Islamist commentary does this political work by way of two interpretative strategies: critically updating the ideas of Islamist revivalist thinkers for present circumstances, and appropriating its translated (hence foreign) source material as native. Exploring these political effects, I argue, reveals the affinity of Islamist intellectual activism with academic political theory, and provides new insights on Islamism, the Arab Spring, as well as the study of political thought.
