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The study of migrant minorities in Europe has long been characterized by a turn to identity politics. This turn has had two shortcomings: First, it often conflates religion, ethnicity, and nationality, resulting in what I call "categorical astigmatism". Consequently, migrants find themselves lumped into categories they would not primarily identify with. Second, despite its importance in the lived experiences of migrants, class is treated as a "non-identity" and intra-migrant class differences do not get the attention they deserve. Building on these two criticisms, in this article, I first employ Bourdieu's theory of "classification struggles" to conceptualize "categorical astigmatism" and make a plea for categorical clarification. I then suggest the theory of intersectionality as a way out, highlighting the importance of class and its intersection with other markers of difference. Empirically, the paper builds on interviews with migrants from Turkey and Syria in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Syrian crisis has reached its 10th year, this paper explores posttraumatic growth and the related factors among Syrian refugees in Turkey, with the aim of having a better understanding of the predictors of PTG and the risk factors that may play a role in the inhibition of the growth. In this cross-sectional study, 217 displaced Syrian refugees completed the Post Traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ), Brief COPE, General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES), PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5), and sociodemographic information form by a self-reported online survey. Risk and protective factors were associated in bivariate analysis with growth p<0.05 and were retained in multiple regression models to control the confounders. Participants' 60.7% were females, and the mean age was 32.6± 9.4 years. Growth was found to be highest in the Personal Strengths, New Possibilities and Appreciation of Life, Relating to Others, and Spiritual Change. While the consistency of job education, economic status, education level, number of children, level of self-efficacy, level of Turkish, active coping style, religious coping, and self-distraction (p<0.05) were protective factors, the number of traumatic events, and the PTSD symptoms and self-blame were risk factors (p<0.05) in multiple analysis. However, no significant relationship was found for the variables of marital status, taking support, self-distraction, emotional and instrumental support, positive reframing, planning, cultural perception, working type, and age (p>0.05). In conclusion, the findings have provided valuable insight into the domains of the growth among Syrian refugees and discussed both clinical and research-based future recommendations that could be made to improve the mental health of the refugees based on the obtained results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the association between religion and female labor market outcomes using new micro-level data on two distinct Muslim denominations in Turkey: Sunni and Alevi Muslims. We find a positive and significant association between being an Alevi Muslim and female labor force participation and employment, whereas there are no significant differences in male labor market outcomes between the two denominations. We provide evidence that Alevi Muslims have more gender-equal views regarding the role of women in the labor market and consider themselves as more modern. Both Sunnis and Alevis consider themselves as believers in religion (Islam). However, Sunnis are more likely to abide by the rules of religion. We argue that differences in views on gender roles and self-identity regarding modernity between the two denominations drive the results on female labor market outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing focus in political science on right-wing populist parties. But few comparative studies address their discourses and politics relating to family values, especially when involved with policy-making. Moreover, many comparative works about populism focus on a single region – often Western and Eastern Europe. This paper adopts a definition of populism with two different dimensions: the vertical (inclusive), which regards elites, and the horizontal (exclusive), which addresses 'foreigners'. The use of family values in political discourse and policy pertains to the two axes of populism. On the one hand are elites who are accused of being uncommitted to traditional values and morally corrupt. On the other hand are demographic concerns regarding declining birth rates among native populations and immigrants with large families. The stress on family values can also originate from a value orientation – or merely a tactical move – engendered by political competition. This paper specifically examines the politics of family values in the context of policies concerning gender equality, family planning and LGBT rights in three countries: Israel, Italy and Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pivetti et al. (2021a; 2021b) examined links between COVID-related conspiracy beliefs and acceptance of vaccinations in Italy and Finland in 2020. They found that moral purity negatively predicted confidence in science, whereas political orientation predicted COVID-related conspiracy beliefs. Confidence in science, general conspiracy beliefs, and COVID-related conspiracy beliefs were found to negatively predict support for governmental restrictions and attitudes towards vaccines, and positively predict perceptions of informational contamination. Finally, attitudes towards vaccines in general strongly predicted attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccine. The current research seeks to replicate these findings conceptually on a predominately Muslim sample (N = 570, M age = 26.69, 69.8% females) in Turkey in 2021, when the COVID vaccines were widely available. Measures of religiosity and left, center, and right political orientations were added to the original instrument. Hypothesized serial mediational models were tested using structural equation modelling. Results revealed that left and center political orientations positively predicted COVID-related conspiracy beliefs and confidence in science. Religiosity was negatively related to confidence in science. Confidence in science and COVID-related conspiracy beliefs predicted general attitudes toward vaccines. Conspiracy beliefs predicted COVID-related conspiracy beliefs, which in turn negatively predicted support for government restrictions and positively predicted distrust in mainstream media. Attitudes towards vaccines were strongly and positively related to attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines. [This paper was added to the Special Issue on "Conspiracy Theories about Infectious Diseases" in a post-hoc manner. Online publishing allows the addition of new papers to a published special issue, thereby permitting a special issue to grow.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though Turkey's ruling party's (Justice and Development Party, the AKP) nation-building and desired citizen creation policies have been studied, its use of necropolitical narratives and propaganda in education has not been investigated. This paper addresses this gap by examining how the Turkish state ruled by the AKP has propagated its religious necropolitical narrative through the national curriculum and Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) in school textbooks, and magazines and comic books for children. The paper shows that these texts and comics try to indoctrinate children into a religious cult of martyrdom in different ways by encouraging them to view tragic death and getting killed for the nation as a positive event. This paper argues that these propaganda efforts are part of a religious necropolitical indoctrination campaign that seeks to create a new Islamist and jihadist generation of lifelong supporters of the AKP, which portrays itself in the educational texts as the embodiment of Islam, the Muslim Turkish nation and even the global Muslim community (ummah). This new religious generation is expected to believe that dying for the Islamist populist authoritarian regime is the greatest honour a person can bring upon themselves. This paper contributes to the necropolitics literature by showing that not only adults but also children have been targeted by authoritarian rulers' necropolitical propaganda attempts to create desired citizens who are ready to die for the regime, believing this is a religious obligation. Further research is needed to assess if and to what extent this propaganda has an impact on children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to clarify the concept of 'civilizational populism' and work towards a concise but operational definition. To do this, the article examines how populists across the world, and in a variety of different religious, geographic, and political contexts, incorporate and instrumentalize notions of 'civilization' into their discourses. The article observes that although a number of scholars have described a civilization turn among populists, there is currently no concrete definition of civilization populism, a concept which requires greater clarity. The article also observes that, while scholars have often found populists in Europe incorporating notions of civilization and 'the clash of civilizations' into the discourses, populists in non-Western environments also appear to have also incorporated notions of civilization into their discourses, yet these are rarely studied. The first part of the article begins by discussing the concept of 'civilizationism', a political discourse which emphasizes the civilizational aspect of social and especially national identity. Following this, the article discusses populism and describes how populism itself cannot succeed unless it adheres to a wider political programme or broader set of ideas, and without the engendering or exploiting of a 'crisis' which threatens 'the people'. The article then examines the existing literature on the civilization turn evident among populists. The second part of the article builds on the previous section by discussing the relationship between civilizationism and populism worldwide. To do this, the paper examines civilizational populism in three key nations representing three of the world's major faiths, and three different geographical regions: Turkey, India, and Myanmar. The paper makes three findings. First, while scholars have generally examined civilizational identity in European and North American right-wing populist rhetoric, we find it occurring in a wider range of geographies and religious contexts. Second, civilizationism when incorporated into populism gives content to the key signifiers: 'the pure people', 'the corrupt elite', and 'dangerous 'others'. In each case studied in this article, populists use a civilization based classification of peoples to draw boundaries around 'the people', 'elites' and 'others', and declare that 'the people' are 'pure' and 'good' because they belong to a civilization which is itself pure and good, and authentic insofar as they belong to the civilization which created the nation and culture which populists claim to be defending. Conversely, civilizational populists describe elites as having betrayed 'the people' by abandoning the religion and/or values and culture that shaped and were shaped by their civilization. Equally, civilizational populists describe religious minorities as 'dangerous' others who are morally bad insofar as they belong to a foreign civilization, and therefore to a different religion and/or culture with different values which are antithetical to those of 'our' civilization. Third, civilizational populist rhetoric is effective insofar as populists' can, by adding a civilizational element to the vertical and horizontal dimensions of their populism, claim a civilizational crisis is occurring. Finally, based on the case studies, the paper defines civilizational populism as a group of ideas that together considers that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people, and society to be ultimately separated into two homogenous and antagonistic groups, 'the pure people' versus 'the corrupt elite' who collaborate with the dangerous others belonging to other civilizations that are hostile and present a clear and present danger to the civilization and way of life of the pure people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The founders of the secular Turkish Republic, the Kemalists used secular nationalist education to build a secular Turkish nation and to create their own version of modern pro-Western secular Turkish citizens. This paper argues that Turkey's current ruling party, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) has been using the same system of education to create its own desired citizens with Islamist Populist ideals. This has been done without changing the secular principles of the constitution and laws on national education since there are several constraints that would prevent AKP to have open and declared pro-Sharia changes to the law. Thus, unlike many other Islamists in the other parts of the world, the paper shows that the AKP has chosen to undermine the secularity of the system, constitution, and law in an ad hoc, gradual and undeclared fashion. The paper concludes by noting that no matter the change in political actors and their ideologies, education is monopolized by the state for political purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper delves into the intricate relationship between religious populism and the legitimization of digital authoritarianism in Turkey. Specifically, it investigates how the ruling party, AKP, has strategically linked Islamist values to state policies as a means of justifying its repressive control over digital technology. Through an examination of internet governance at multiple levels—full network-level governance, sub-network or website-level governance, proxy or corporation-level governance, and network–node or individual-level governance—the study reveals the instrumentalization of religious populism to consolidate support and validate the government's autocratic agenda. Furthermore, it sheds light on the role of state-controlled religious institutions, traditional media, social media outlets, as well as religious leaders and organizations in shaping public opinion, enabling the government to exert greater control over the dissemination of information. By dissecting the religious populist justification of digital authoritarianism in Turkey, this research provides valuable insights into the complex dynamics at play in the realm of online governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use of religion by an authoritarian ruling party to delegitimize political opposition through securitization. The case study presented is the ruling AKP in Turkey, which initially promised to desecuritize the Kurdish issue to co-opt the Kurdish opposition but eventually resorted to the demonization narratives and repressive policies of the secular Turkish state; however, in addition to labeling the Kurdish opposition as terrorists, the AKP deployed religion to legitimize its repressive policies on religious grounds. The Turkish case shows that not in legitimizing (via desecuritization), but in delegitimizing opposition (via securitization) religion has been the main tool deployed by the ruling party. This finding needs to be tested in other contexts and cases. Additionally, since this paper only focuses on the narrative of the AKP's religious delegitimization, further research is needed to measure its efficacy and impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Behind a veneer of "disinterested" concern, death rituals reflect and reproduce patterns of social and cultural stratification. This paper examines 296,483 death announcements published in a Turkish daily newspaper in a 60-year timespan. The content analysis of the texts shows that, first, the discourses around death reveal the complex overlaps between cultural boundaries and social stratification. Second, the patterns of social and cultural stratification in death announcements interweave with broad historical trends, making it possible to "read" societies through the lens of death. These historical trends map onto foundational issues, such as the gender gap, neoliberal transformations, modernization, and religiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is it possible to establish a radical separation between religion and politics in constitutionally secular states? Is religion a private or political matter? In many countries, religious people are becoming activists, involving politics, trying to change the policies based on their beliefs or get a share of the state power. Their claims sometimes fall within the democratic structure of the country, and sometimes outside of it. This paper provides insight into the relation between state and religion by focusing on the religious politics of two countries, Turkey and Hungary This study is, in essence, a crossregional and cross-religious comparative study, presenting the very first comparison of the state-religion relationships in the two countries. Ninian Smart's concept of dimensions of religion will be used as a framework to extract a pattern for each country. These dimensions exist in social systems and reflect the cultural and social milieu in which people socialize and build their own beliefs. Our goal is to present and prove that the religious features of Turkey and Hungary are comparable and show similarities along each dimension of Smart. Exploratory qualitative analysis will be employed to collect and analyze qualitative data in order to generate new concepts and generalizations. The data will be collected from open sources, such as newspapers, statistics, and survey results in Hungary and Turkey, to find the answer to the research questions. The main results of our comparative analysis are, first, evidence for substantial similarities regarding the presence of religion in the public sphere in each Smartian dimension, although in countries that are very different in terms of religion. Second, our systematic and structured analysis provides a strong and impartial invitation for further comparative research from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blame avoidance has been one of the most applied strategies by policy makers in both democratic and non-democratic regimes to avoid responsibility and accountability in cases of failure and tragic events. It is also known that politicians have used religion for Machiavellian purposes, as exactly advised by Machiavelli. However, a systematic empirical analysis of how religion is used for blame avoidance by politicians has not been conducted. In this article, we aim to address this gap by examining the empirical data derived from the weekly Friday sermon texts produced by Turkey's Directorate of Religious Affairs and delivered in more than 90 thousand mosques every week to a large segment of the population in Turkey, where the majority claims to be religious. Starting with its violent response to the peaceful Gezi protests in 2013, the ruling AKP has opened up a new phase in Turkish political history by resorting to civilizational populism: it blamed the Western world for financing and masterminding the protests, using the protestors as internal pawns to attack Turkey and the Muslim World, suppressed the protests brutally and entered into a populist authoritarian regime. Our paper shows, following this turn, how the Diyanet sermons started using religion to help with the AKP's blame avoidance. The Diyanet either parroted the AKP's conspiratorial narrative or tried to convince the citizens that all negativities are works of God and with these humans are being tested by God. The AKP's use of religion to avoid blame is a text-book case of how both a religious institution and religious discourse can be used to help the incumbent avoid responsibility. Whenever, there was a problem that would the AKP votes, the Diyanet's sermons tried to shift the blame to either God or citizens or conspiratorial enemies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the conditions under which the sharing of sacred sites in Turkey is still possible despite the serious Sunnification campaign of the AKP regime. I argue that ideological, cultural, and pragmatic motivations led the Turkish state to refrain from interfering in practices the ruling party deems sacrilegious and distasteful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alevism has been regarded as a contested identity which is difficult to define because of its ‘syncretic’ character. Attempts at definition have been overwhelmed by essentialist approaches as well as different political agendas since the fifteenth-century Ottoman period. This paper aims to trace the history of Alevism with a particular focus on historical sources such as theVelāyetnāmesand the organization ofocaksanddergahs. The paper argues that we shall see Alevism as an ethno-religious identity which is formed under different social conditions and emerged through the complexities of the organization ofocaksin a vast territory encompassing different ethnic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The majority of women in Turkey wear headscarves. However, from 1997 to 2013, headscarves were banned in tertiary education institutions, due to the Turkish military's decision that headscarves are incompatible with secularism. This study examines the impact of wearing headscarves on women's educational attainment. In particular, it measures the impact of the headscarf ban by using a regression–discontinuity method, based on individual-level data from four countrywide surveys. Within the confines of the econometric analysis and data set used, the author finds statistically significantly lower tertiary educational attainment among headscarved women, but finds no evidence that the ban reduced the tertiary educational attainment of headscarved women. This result may reflect that, since only 3.5 percent of headscarved women born before the ban had some tertiary education, there was not much room for the methodological approach to capture any significant effects of the ban. HIGHLIGHTS - There exists a large gap in the educational attainment of headscarved women compared to that of non-headscarved women in Turkey, even after controlling for background variables. - This paper finds no evidence that the ban on headscarves at tertiary educational institutions, in effect from 1997 to 2013, reduced the tertiary educational attainment of headscarved women, which was already low. - Educational disadvantage for headscarved women begins after primary school. - Although lifting the headscarf ban was a good first step, eliminating the barriers to women's education will require a much broader perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the relationship between Islam and democracy has received considerable attention in the social science literature, very few studies have explained the dynamics of support for democracy through a micro-level, socio-psychological lens. Applying a novel perspective, this study analyzes the empirical nexus among Islamic religiosity, being open to new ideas and creativity (ONIC), and pro-democratic attitudes to probe the following two questions: Are Muslims who are open to new ideas and think creatively more supportive of democracy than those who are not? Could ONIC be an intervening factor between religiosity and support for democracy? To this end, the paper systematically (1) examines the interrelationship between ONIC and Islamic religiosity; (2) estimates the effects thereof on support for democracy; (3) assesses the mediating potential of ONIC between devoutness and pro-democratic attitudes through an illustrative case of Turkey. The findings indicate that ONIC and Islamic religiosity are not mutually exclusive. The evidence also suggests that, ceteris paribus, while religiosity is positively associated with pro-democratic attitudes, the mediating potential of ONIC is inconclusive. Religiosity and ONIC appear to have an independent effect on support for democracy. Educational reforms or policies that cultivate and support creative thinking might be consequential for building and fostering democracy in Islamic societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to contribute to the growing Foreign Policy Analysis literature by focusing on the role of non-state actors in foreign policy implementation. Special attention is paid to the case of Turkey, which has emerged as a 'humanitarian state' in the last decade. In Turkey, relatively new Islamically oriented humanitarian NGOs (HNGOs) have been providing ever-increasing amounts of humanitarian aid throughout the former Ottoman lands including the Middle East and Africa. Employing a constructivist-realist perspective, this paper asserts that a 'parallelism,' if not a complementarity, exists between Turkey's Islamically oriented HNGO discourse and practice and AKP foreign policy implementation process. Based on primary qualitative data acquired from interviews, this study has identified various degrees of parallelism between the two, calling into question the status of these HNGOs as purportedly non-governmental entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper looks at the influence of culture on Turkish cancer patients' use of meaning-making coping, paying particular attention to religious, spiritual, and existential coping methods. Data were collected using an interview study (n = 25, 18 women, age range 20–71). Individuals were recruited at an oncology center and a psychiatry clinic in Istanbul. The main focus of the study has been on existential meaning-making coping, which is characterized by finding power inside oneself, altruism, family love, a search for meaning by contemplating philosophical issues, and having a positive life perspective (shukran—thankfulness). In contrast to findings from similar studies conducted in other countries (studies included in the same project), in Turkey religious belief directly determines the coping methods used, including the non-religious methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Weber's articulate conceptualisation of the nexus between religion and economics, these phenomena have been examined through various academic viewpoints. While some take religion as a determining factor of economic performance, others argue that it is the economy that influences religiosity. This paper focuses on the manifestation of religion and economics in the political sphere regarding the case of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP). After discussing the literature on the relations between religion and economics, it scrutinises the AKP period, considering three specific pillars: (a) the early years of the AKP in which Western economic policies were implemented as a continuation of the Kemal Derviş period; (b) between 2008 and 2015, when the idea 'we can do as well' maintained the centre stage; and (c) 2015 and onwards, when the Islamist influence on economic policy became highly apparent, particularly regarding interest rates. This study argues that the AKP changed politically in terms of Islamic influence upon the economic sphere, however this remains at the discursive level for the time being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recent paper in this journal argues that some cases of schizophrenia should be seen as cases of demon possession and treated by faith healers. A reply, also published in this journal, responds by raising concerns about the intellectual credibility and potentially harmful practical implications of demon possession beliefs. My paper contributes to the discussion, arguing that a critique of demon possession beliefs in the context of schizophrenia is needed, but suggesting an alternative basis for it. It also reflects on important differences between demonic and other forms of spirit possession and considers the implications of this for mental healthcare providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the effects of migration on life satisfaction in later life. We compare the life satisfaction of older migrants with that of non-migrants and return migrants of a similar age and originating from the same regions in Turkey. Turks constitute one of the largest migrant groups in Europe, and the growing population of older Turkish migrants display greater risks of loneliness and material disadvantage compared to native-born populations in Europe. However, compared to their non-migrant peers from the country of origin, older migrants may experience gains from migration that are reflected in their life satisfaction. Using the 2000 Families Study, a large survey of Turkish migrants from the peak labour migration period and their non-migrant comparators, we investigate whether life satisfaction of migrants and stayers differs and the possible causes of any differences. We find that both migrants and return migrants experience higher life satisfaction in old age than stayers. However, the gap cannot be explained by the classical determinants of life satisfaction such as income, health, partner and friends, or religiosity, nor by the better outcomes of the migrants’ children. We discuss possible reasons for this migration satisfaction advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the construction of an Alevi political identity in terms of cultural, social and religious values at a time when the role of religion is increasing in the political life of Turkey. It indicates the emergence of a new form of conflict and hegemonic articulation between Sunnism and Alevism that offers an alternative means of conflict resolution by the Alevi political agents within a radical pluralism and agonistic democracy. It also argues that the social construction of Alevi political identity is both a political project and an ontological question as this identity focuses on religious discourses in establishing a counter-hegemonic culture through mobilizing political ‘collective passion’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Religiously motivated welfare provisioning has played an increasingly important role in the Turkish social welfare arena over the previous two decades. This paper investigates the society-specific mechanisms behind the contemporary proliferation of religiously motivated associations (RMAs) in Turkey. The historical analysis of the development of the Turkish welfare regime demonstrates that the spread of RMAs cannot be attributed to retrenchments within the welfare state. In fact, the provision of social assistance by central and local state institutions has expanded over the same time period. The paper claims that the rise of RMAs is not only a response to increasing liberalization and economic deregulation, but also an outcome of the rise of religion as a principle line of cleavage within the political sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mevlânâ Celâleddin Rumî, a thirteenth-century Sufi leader, is an important religious figure in the Islamic-Sufi tradition. He is regarded as the founder of the Mevlevi Order. On the other hand, Sufism has been officially banned in the Turkish Republic since 1925, which includes all Sufi lodges, and the Mevlevî order is no exception. Although the public visibility of Sufi practices had been illegal and Sufism had lost its legitimacy in modern Turkey, the Turkish State established and recognized commemorations in honour of Mevlânâ approximately two decades after launching the secular reforms banning Sufism. Today these ceremonies are held annually and attended regularly by the highest state authorities. The first commemoration was held in Konya in December 1942 on the occasion of the 670th anniversary of Mevlânâ’s death where Mevlânâ was presented as ‘the great thinker of Anatolia’. This paper examines the intellectual and discursive context that helped legitimize the commemoration of a religious figure. Drawing on Michel Foucault and Edward Said’s theoretical insights, it analyses the cultural-intellectual debates and framings of Mevlânâ by the traditionalists, humanists, and nationalists thinkers, expressed in the speeches given at the first commemoration in 1942. Analysis suggests that epistemological shifts behind different conceptions of Mevlânâ have given way to a hybrid narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines ethics and morality as studied by Al Nursi, a reformist Muslim scholar accredited with the rise of the current Muslim revival in modern Turkey. The paper examines Al Nursi's macro theory of God's attributes and establishes a concise linguistic and semantic link between a sample of God's attributes and journalism ethics. The paper presents a normative perspective on journalism ethics from the religious-Islamic standpoint and maintains that the field of journalism ethics is further enhanced and transformed when the religious source of morality is brought to bear on ethics and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the interdependency of various forms of violence and identity formation processes in late Ottoman Kosovo will be analysed. The paper will demonstrate that within different contexts of violence, identity and loyalty were constructed and increasingly exclusive forms of identities were fostered. These were, though, not national, but showed rather traditional patterns. Violence shaped everyday life regardless of religion, within the framework of customary law, vendetta, notions of honour and manhood, but also within the framework of everyday violence motivated by economic hardships. More important it strengthened feelings of otherness to a very high degree in religious categories. Here it is possible to distinguish several factors. Religious barriers between the different population groups were enforced by an increase in violence as a consequence of the Ottoman reform policy (tanzimat, late-Hamidian reforms). War related violence constituted the most significant impact on identity formation in Kosovo. Here not only wars that directly touched Kosovo (Russian-Ottoman War 1877-1878, First Balkan War 1912-1913), but also wars outside the region between the Ottoman Empire and Christian states, played an important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to understand the changing characteristics of urban poverty in Turkey since 1980. First, it analyses how the urban poor in Turkey had adopted aggressive survival strategies by strengthening their solidarity networks on religious, ethnic and cultural bases until the 2000s. Then it sheds light on how those networks have dissolved later on thanks to a set of internal and external factors and concludes that Turkey now faces deepening poverty levels and engendering new forms and dynamics of poverty. This paper is based on the Sultanbeyli district of Istanbul, a district almost entirely composed of unauthorized houses whose population grew at an unprecedented rate after 1980; and it is a perfect case for the study of issues relating to migration, urbanization and poverty in Turkish cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Supporters of the Fethullah Gülen community, an informal institution with an influential role in Turkish political life, have formed an international chain of schools and student dormitories, and a communications web that includes newspapers, journals, television and radio channels, as well as other companies and finance institutions. Although the community has no formal structure, its followers have established these formal institutions to integrate it into formal systems like education and the economy. This paper focuses on the community's educational organizations to argue that, since the community has preferred to pursue its goals within Turkey's existing formal framework, rather than by challenging it or breaking its rules, it can be defined as an accommodating informal institution rather than complementary, competing or substitutive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Liberal modernists have claimed that democracy requires participation by interested parties in the politics of need interpretation. Poor people, an interested party, may lack the rational and critical language essential for the process of interpretation. This paper discusses a different perspective on the language of participation by the poor. Focusing on the everyday practices of the poor and using information collected from ethnographic research in Sultanbeyli, a low-income district in Istanbul, Turkey, it is shown how discursive power constrains the language and the manner of talking that the poor use to articulate their needs. The people in the district, “former villagers bound to the Anatolian tradition” using religious morality as a justification of their demands, successfully negotiate with administrators of social assistance programs, thus participating directly in the politics of need interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following the last quarter of the eleventh century, the number of Sufi groups and of their adherents increased in parallel with the Turkicization and Islamization of Anatolia. The shaykhs at the head of these groups became important figures in society. The influence of Islamic mysticism carried on from the past, combined with the positive image the Sufi shaykhs secured by their service to the people, enabled them to exert a powerful spiritual influence over the populace. That influence was the basis of a position of privilege vis-à-vis the ruling elites as well as the ordinary people; over time, for all its grounding in religious authority, this privilege accrued a worldly dimension. It is noticeable that the most influential of the Sufi shaykhs found it difficult to share influence with fellow shaykhs of different affiliation in different regions. This paper describes and explains their competition in connection with their sociopolitical standing and influence. In this regard, it aims firstly to examine the reasons for the spiritual influence enjoyed by the shaykhs, and the impact of those reasons on how the shaykhs were perceived by the people in thirteenth and fifteenthcentury Anatolia. The competition among the shaykhs is presented through analysis of their relations as recorded in historical and hagiographical sources from the period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents some related processes in Turkey which have been initiated or influenced by the World Bank's execution of the Social Risk Mitigation Project (SRMP). It argues that the Justice and Development Party (AKP), as a party that redefined social assistance as charity by incorporating Islamic values with neo-liberalism, benefited from the SRMP for increasing its public support. It also demonstrates how the AKP's use of this project for its political aims led to some unintended consequences, causing the production and spreading of discourses about the poor, the Kurdish population and the emergence of a culture of poverty in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though reaching a conclusive point seems impossible, debate on the relation between Islam and democracy is one of the most foundational discussions in politics today. Turkey is frequently seen as a positive example demonstrating the compatibility between Islam and democracy. Especially after the democratic reforms undertaken by the Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan and his effective governance. Erdoğan's party, the Justice and Development Party, seems to represent the Turkish Islamist intellectuals' political response to international and internal pressure toward democracy. Although it is true that the majority of contemporary Turkish Islamists have accepted liberal democracy, their devotion to its values has only been in form of a very pragmatic and functional approach rather than a true commitment to democracy. This paper will briefly focus on the international and internal pressures on conservative intellectuals toward democracy. More extensively, Ali Bulac and Hayreddin Karaman, two living Islamist authors, their intellectual careers, interpretations of democracy and their problematic approach to democracy will be thoroughly discussed. The two authors defend democracy and civil rights. However, democracy is only taken as a set of representative institutions and a free electoral system, and not pluralism, civility and tolerance. Yet at the same time, it is this contradiction that has been one of the major obstacles to the development of a true democracy in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses cosmopolitanism in practice in Europe via an engagement with the 'EU-Turkey question', analysing the extent to which a 'cosmopolitan outlook' is emerging within Turkey and in European reactions to Turkey and the ways in which this plays out in the face of important political opposition in both settings. It argues that in the context of Turkey's internal politics and the European Union's (EU's) consideration of Turkey's candidature, an essentialist view of identity is constitutive of hostile relations between the EU and Turkey and within Turkish and European societies. Conversely, the adoption of a critical and reflexive cosmopolitan outlook as theory and political practice - examples of which are to be found in the Turkish political reform process and some of the recent practice of the European Commission - offers the best hope for a cosmopolitan Europe inclusive of cosmopolitan Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nussbaum's capabilities approach is based on a universalistic account of central human functionings. She claims that if central human capabilities are located within a particular kind of political liberalism, then they can become specific political goals and the object of an overlapping consensus among people who otherwise have very different comprehensive conceptions of the good. This paper reconsiders these arguments on the basis of fieldwork conducted among migrant women living in squatter settlements of Istanbul. By going through Nussbaum's list of central human capabilities, I elaborate their relevance in terms of the existing, stated and desired capabilities of these women. In doing so, I underline the importance of thinking about capabilities in relational terms and challenge the concept "autonomous agency". I also demonstrate the (im)possibility of separating the political and non-political realms, particularly in issues regarding religion and family, and argue for the need to redefine the boundaries of the political within the capability framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kemalism in Turkey is often presented as an exemplary case of paternalistic and authoritarian modernisation from above, and lauded or condemned for that very reason. Represented in these terms, certain analytic and political binaries are also activated: state versus society; world-view versus life-world; universality versus particularity; inauthenticity versus indigeneity; homogeneity versus heterogeneity/resistance. By contrast, in this paper I seek to sidestep these organising categories to focus on Kemalism and Islamism as rival forms of the same social imaginary signification, and not as shorthand for these polarities. Using a number of representative texts, I argue that the extravagance of Islamist resistance in Turkey post-1980 brings to light the fantastical power of Kemalism itself, exposed as a project of the triumph of the will. This being the case, what has been written in anthropology about acts of 'self-institution'? The work of Nigel Rapport and Cornelius Castoriadis emphasises, in different ways, the arbitrariness and gratuity of social creation out of nothing or self-institution. Pierre Bourdieu's work, on the other hand, is radically contrary to Rapport's in its structuralist elaboration of agency as guided action. My analysis of processes of change within both the Islamist and Republican social movements in Turkey from the early 1990s to the present seeks a temporary rapprochement, at least in this case, between Rapport's methodological individualism and Bourdieu's methodological holism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, after a short theoretical discussion of the methodology of comparison in the first section and an attempt to define "political culture" in the second, focuses on two processes of modernization: the Turkish and the Russian. "Political culture" is defined as a kind of imagined formula that includes varying values, intuitions, characteristic features, and even social manners (modus operandi) of a defined political system. In this paper it serves as a key concept in the comparison that is done. The third section, then, deals with the historical dimensions of the Turkish and Russian processes of modernization. It examines what the main aims of the Russian and Turkish modernizers were, what they did, what the main limiting factors were, what was common to the two modernization experiences, and what the role of religion in both countries was. The article also discusses modernization in Turkey and Russia from another point of departure: whether it was European or not. Following upon the discussion of the modernization experiences in both Turkey and Russia and some of the current debates, the article summarizes the meaning of Europe for Russia and Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship between nationalism and religion and its adaptation to cultural values and ideological differences in countries on the Balkan Peninsula. The incorporation of religious concepts in movements for state formation and ethnonational expansion in the Balkans, the effects of institutionalization and de-institutionalization in the post-communist era, the historical association of nationalism with ethnic identity, the secular reforms in Turkey, the influence of the Ottoman Empire in Greece, and the impact of post-colonialism in Cyprus are discussed.