Religion in modern Turkey.

The article discusses that in modern Turkey the study of religion has been primarily focused around the issues of secularism and secularization. Theologians and pious laymen, statesmen and political scientists, sociologists and ideologues have marshalled their theories, arguments, analyses, polemics and counter-thrusts around this theme. Secularism is, no doubt, an important issue but the Turkish fixation with secularism has markedly impoverished the study of religion, for religious studies have thereby been drawn out of their necessary context of psychological need, cultural meaning, ritual behaviour, societal values and--partly--institutional setting. While the following account describes the functioning of religious institutions in Turkish society it would be a mistake to think that this socio-centric description is, in itself, sufficient to explain Turkish religious behaviour. In a historical sequence, the first of these universes of shared meaning, which make up the variety of Turkish Islam, is that of Shamanism, the earliest religion of the very same Turkic group who later founded the Ottoman dynasty.