Yusuf Sarfati | Illinois State University (original) (raw)
Books by Yusuf Sarfati
This edited volume brings together a collection of chapters that offer theoretically pertinent co... more This edited volume brings together a collection of chapters that offer theoretically pertinent comparisons between various dimensions of Israeli and Turkish politics. Each chapter covers a different aspect of state–society interactions in both countries from a comparative perspective, including the public role of religion, political culture, women rights movements, religious education, religious movements, marriage regulation, labor market inclusion, and ethnic minorities.
Contrary to the expectations of the secularization theorists, religious political movements rose ... more Contrary to the expectations of the secularization theorists, religious political movements rose to prominence in numerous countries across the globe in the past three decades. By examining the conditions that underlie the electoral fortunes of religious actors in democratic regimes, this book contributes to our understanding of this worldwide religious resurgence.
Employing a social movement theory framework, Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics explores the macro and micro dynamics of successful political mobilization by Sephardic Torah Guardians (Shas) in Israel and the National Outlook Movement in Turkey in the recent decades. In a comparative framework, the book demonstrates how ripe political opportunities, appropriate frames and dense social networks contribute to building popular support in Israel and Turkey. Yusuf Sarfati also assesses the effects of the increasing political power of religious actors on democratic governance and illustrates similarities and differences between two countries.
Drawing on empirical data from a range of interviews conducted in both Israel and Turkey, this book provides a comparative study of religious politics in two countries that are often thought of as ‘exceptional cases,’ and are rarely compared. As such, this book is a welcome contribution for those studying Middle East politics, comparative politics, religious politics, democratization and social movements.
Articles by Yusuf Sarfati
Gezi Park protests that rocked Turkey in 2013 left a significant mark in the coun-try's collectiv... more Gezi Park protests that rocked Turkey in 2013 left a significant mark in the coun-try's collective memory and contributed to the construction of a new language of political resistance. To challenge an increasingly authoritarian government, the protesters used novel repertoires of contention, particularly political graffiti. To better understand different types of linguistic and symbolic communication tools used in the public space during Gezi Park protests and their impact on different set of audiences, this article explores the following research questions: (i) What indexical properties are used in the languages used in graffiti, and what do they mean for understanding the various audiences that the protesters engaged? (ii) What counter-narratives are created in the graffiti produced during Gezi Park protests?
Turkey’s current slide to authoritarianism creates a puzzle for democratization theory, as it cha... more Turkey’s current slide to authoritarianism creates a puzzle for democratization theory, as it challenges the commonly accepted relationship between wealth and democracy. There is a large consensus in the democratization literature that a robust civil society, a growing middle class, and high GDP per capita create a conducive environment for an authoritarian country to democratize and make it harder for democratic countries to turn authoritarian. Prominent scholars of Turkish politics used these arguments when conceptualizing Turkey’s liberalization and the checkered democratization process in the post-1980 period. Yet, despite positive economic growth, a flourishing civil society, and a rising middle class, Turkey drifted toward a competitive authoritarian regime during the past five years. The article addresses this puzzle and discusses how the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) co-opted Islamic civil society organizations and attached conservative businessmen to the state through crony-relations, thereby stripping these societal forces from their democratizing qualities.
KEYWORDS: Modernization theory, democratization, (competitive) authoritarianism, AKP, Turkish politics
Language Policy, Feb 2013
This article explores the diminished use of Judeo-Spanish among Jews living in Turkey and asks th... more This article explores the diminished use of Judeo-Spanish among Jews living in Turkey and asks the following research question: What factors, ideologies, and practices contribute to the demise of Judeo-Spanish? To address this question, we employed life history inquiry based on two oral history archives documenting elderly Turkish-Jewish community members’ lived experiences in Turkey. We argue that the endangerment of Judeo-Spanish is caused by the reciprocal interaction between broader, societal language ideologies and family-internal language practices. In particular, the opening of the Alliance schools among the Turkish Jewry in the second half of the nineteenth century relegated Judeo-Spanish to a lower social standing and promoted French as the language of Western enlightenment while Turkish nationalism and the ‘Turkish-only’ language policies of the newly formed Turkish Republic aimed to create a monolingual public space in Turkey. To further explain how monolingual language ideologies influenced the use of Judeo-Spanish in the family, we discuss the negative language attitudes towards Judeo-Spanish that are reproduced in the family and specific language practices (e.g., code-meshing) that relegate Judeo-Spanish to linguistic periphery, yet keep this language as a marker of ethnic identity.
Book Chapters by Yusuf Sarfati
Political Muslims: Understanding Youth Resistance in a Global Context edited by Tahir Abbas and Sadek Hamid, Syracuse University Press, 2019
Discussions on Islamic identity politics in Turkey most often focus on the Justice and Developme... more Discussions on Islamic identity politics in Turkey most often focus on the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) because of the party’s hegemonic position in Turkish politics in the past decade. This overemphasis on the AKP glosses over the diversity of groups with an explicit Muslim identity and gives the false impression of a univocal Islamic public sphere in Turkey. This chapter instead examines what I call the “new Islamic Left”: the ideologies and practices of the Labor and Justice Platform (Emek ve Adalet Platformu, hereafter “the Platform”) and Anticapitalist Muslims (Antikapitalist Müslümanlar) as alternate Islamic formations
The Jarring Road to Democratic Inclusion: A Comparative Assessment of State Society Engagements i... more The Jarring Road to Democratic Inclusion: A Comparative Assessment of State Society Engagements in Israel and Turkey ed. by Aviad Rubin and Yusuf Sarfati, 1-20, Lexington Books, 2016
In Irving Epstein (ed.), The Whole World is Texting: Youth Protest in the Information Age, 25-43. Pittsburgh: Sense Publishers, 2015., May 27, 2015
Research Reports by Yusuf Sarfati
Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, 2019
Baker Institute for Public Policy, 2019
In this paper, I first summarize the results of an original survey on religious authority in Turk... more In this paper, I first summarize the results of an original survey on religious authority in Turkey and discuss how much credibility and trust Turkish citizens confer to different public figures as sources of religious authority. Then, I discuss the role of official religious authorities such as the Diyanet (the Directorate of Religious Affairs) and state religious
schools in bolstering the AKP’s political hegemony. The third section examines Ihsan Eliaçık’s Islamic political philosophy and delineates his pluralist, egalitarian, and democratic interpretations and how these differ from the AKP’s authoritarian Islamism. Lastly, I map AKP sympathizers’ views on key issues such as religious tolerance, belief in multivocality of
religion, corruption, democracy, gender equality, and the role of religion in politics, and compare their perspectives to those of supporters of the religious opposition in Turkey in an attempt to understand whether and how Eliaçık’s liberal democratic Islamic ideology resonates with his social base.
Relations between immigrants and African Americans increasingly draw the attention of policy-make... more Relations between immigrants and African Americans increasingly draw the attention of policy-makers,
researchers, community organizers, and community members alike. Sheer force of numbers accounts for
much of this interest. Latinos, many of them immigrants or the children of immigrants, now outnumber
African Americans nationally, and many of the nation’s largest cities already are “minority-majority.” Actual
and perceived tensions between the groups also attract attention. From gang violence to political
representation, from labor concerns to negative stereotypes, black Americans and immigrants are
engaging each other on a range of issues. In many communities, including some in the South, Midwest,
and Northeast previously marked almost exclusively by black-white interactions, inter-minority relations
feature more prominently on the political agenda than white-minority relationships do.
Many progressives, in particular, also note that during this generation-long American era of deepening
inequality between the most affluent Americans and everyone else, African Americans and immigrants
number disproportionately among our nation’s truly disadvantaged. Increasingly, we also hear nonprofit
leaders, advocates, community members and even some elected officials pushing the observation about
the communities’ common challenges one step further. Rather than succumb to largely structural
inducements to regard each other as rivals, they argue, the interests of black Americans and immigrants
would be served best by deliberate, strategic collaboration between them.
In light of this range of interests in relationships between the communities, in this report we highlight the
challenges and opportunities that characterize collaborative efforts between immigrant and African
American communities in the United States. The five examples presented do not represent the full range
of efforts that could be described as alliances. Rather, we focused our efforts specifically on alliances
that, 1) involve one or more social justice organizations with a primarily African American constituency; 2)
involve one or more social justice organizations with a significant immigrant constituency; 3) work on
specific policy advocacy that is a common concern of both constituencies. Most of the information offered
here was gathered in the course of interviews, conducted between November 2007 and September 2008,
with 46 individuals representing 32 social justice organizations.
Many historical, structural, and cultural barriers sometimes interfere with collaboration attempts between
African Americans and immigrants. Historical challenges include the legacy of U.S. immigration policies
such as the Bracero program that fueled immigration to the U.S. for many years and recent controversies
around comprehensive immigration reform. Structural challenges are also significant, including the
socioeconomic marginalization that affects both African Americans and immigrants and the fact that the
communities often share residential neighborhoods, provoking tensions over the allocation of limited
resources. These strains are compounded by cultural barriers such as the misperceptions that the
communities harbor about each other, the existence of an anti-immigrant wedge movement, and the
prevalence of a conflict narrative in the mainstream media that encourages a zero-sum mentality among
both groups. Nevertheless, as demonstrated by our case studies, opportunities to unite and to achieve
important policy successes exist.
Book Reviews by Yusuf Sarfati
Syllabi by Yusuf Sarfati
The syllabus of my POL 349, "Topics in Middle East Politics" course for Spring 2016 semester
Reviews of my book by Yusuf Sarfati
Book Review of Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics: A Comparative Study of Israel and Tur... more Book Review of Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics: A Comparative Study of Israel and Turkey, Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.
Review of Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics: A Comparative Study of Israel and Turkey, ... more Review of Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics: A Comparative Study of Israel and Turkey, Routledge, 2013
Review of Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics: A Comparative Study of Israel and Turkey, ... more Review of Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics: A Comparative Study of Israel and Turkey, Routledge, 2013
This edited volume brings together a collection of chapters that offer theoretically pertinent co... more This edited volume brings together a collection of chapters that offer theoretically pertinent comparisons between various dimensions of Israeli and Turkish politics. Each chapter covers a different aspect of state–society interactions in both countries from a comparative perspective, including the public role of religion, political culture, women rights movements, religious education, religious movements, marriage regulation, labor market inclusion, and ethnic minorities.
Contrary to the expectations of the secularization theorists, religious political movements rose ... more Contrary to the expectations of the secularization theorists, religious political movements rose to prominence in numerous countries across the globe in the past three decades. By examining the conditions that underlie the electoral fortunes of religious actors in democratic regimes, this book contributes to our understanding of this worldwide religious resurgence.
Employing a social movement theory framework, Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics explores the macro and micro dynamics of successful political mobilization by Sephardic Torah Guardians (Shas) in Israel and the National Outlook Movement in Turkey in the recent decades. In a comparative framework, the book demonstrates how ripe political opportunities, appropriate frames and dense social networks contribute to building popular support in Israel and Turkey. Yusuf Sarfati also assesses the effects of the increasing political power of religious actors on democratic governance and illustrates similarities and differences between two countries.
Drawing on empirical data from a range of interviews conducted in both Israel and Turkey, this book provides a comparative study of religious politics in two countries that are often thought of as ‘exceptional cases,’ and are rarely compared. As such, this book is a welcome contribution for those studying Middle East politics, comparative politics, religious politics, democratization and social movements.
Gezi Park protests that rocked Turkey in 2013 left a significant mark in the coun-try's collectiv... more Gezi Park protests that rocked Turkey in 2013 left a significant mark in the coun-try's collective memory and contributed to the construction of a new language of political resistance. To challenge an increasingly authoritarian government, the protesters used novel repertoires of contention, particularly political graffiti. To better understand different types of linguistic and symbolic communication tools used in the public space during Gezi Park protests and their impact on different set of audiences, this article explores the following research questions: (i) What indexical properties are used in the languages used in graffiti, and what do they mean for understanding the various audiences that the protesters engaged? (ii) What counter-narratives are created in the graffiti produced during Gezi Park protests?
Turkey’s current slide to authoritarianism creates a puzzle for democratization theory, as it cha... more Turkey’s current slide to authoritarianism creates a puzzle for democratization theory, as it challenges the commonly accepted relationship between wealth and democracy. There is a large consensus in the democratization literature that a robust civil society, a growing middle class, and high GDP per capita create a conducive environment for an authoritarian country to democratize and make it harder for democratic countries to turn authoritarian. Prominent scholars of Turkish politics used these arguments when conceptualizing Turkey’s liberalization and the checkered democratization process in the post-1980 period. Yet, despite positive economic growth, a flourishing civil society, and a rising middle class, Turkey drifted toward a competitive authoritarian regime during the past five years. The article addresses this puzzle and discusses how the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) co-opted Islamic civil society organizations and attached conservative businessmen to the state through crony-relations, thereby stripping these societal forces from their democratizing qualities.
KEYWORDS: Modernization theory, democratization, (competitive) authoritarianism, AKP, Turkish politics
Language Policy, Feb 2013
This article explores the diminished use of Judeo-Spanish among Jews living in Turkey and asks th... more This article explores the diminished use of Judeo-Spanish among Jews living in Turkey and asks the following research question: What factors, ideologies, and practices contribute to the demise of Judeo-Spanish? To address this question, we employed life history inquiry based on two oral history archives documenting elderly Turkish-Jewish community members’ lived experiences in Turkey. We argue that the endangerment of Judeo-Spanish is caused by the reciprocal interaction between broader, societal language ideologies and family-internal language practices. In particular, the opening of the Alliance schools among the Turkish Jewry in the second half of the nineteenth century relegated Judeo-Spanish to a lower social standing and promoted French as the language of Western enlightenment while Turkish nationalism and the ‘Turkish-only’ language policies of the newly formed Turkish Republic aimed to create a monolingual public space in Turkey. To further explain how monolingual language ideologies influenced the use of Judeo-Spanish in the family, we discuss the negative language attitudes towards Judeo-Spanish that are reproduced in the family and specific language practices (e.g., code-meshing) that relegate Judeo-Spanish to linguistic periphery, yet keep this language as a marker of ethnic identity.
Political Muslims: Understanding Youth Resistance in a Global Context edited by Tahir Abbas and Sadek Hamid, Syracuse University Press, 2019
Discussions on Islamic identity politics in Turkey most often focus on the Justice and Developme... more Discussions on Islamic identity politics in Turkey most often focus on the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) because of the party’s hegemonic position in Turkish politics in the past decade. This overemphasis on the AKP glosses over the diversity of groups with an explicit Muslim identity and gives the false impression of a univocal Islamic public sphere in Turkey. This chapter instead examines what I call the “new Islamic Left”: the ideologies and practices of the Labor and Justice Platform (Emek ve Adalet Platformu, hereafter “the Platform”) and Anticapitalist Muslims (Antikapitalist Müslümanlar) as alternate Islamic formations
The Jarring Road to Democratic Inclusion: A Comparative Assessment of State Society Engagements i... more The Jarring Road to Democratic Inclusion: A Comparative Assessment of State Society Engagements in Israel and Turkey ed. by Aviad Rubin and Yusuf Sarfati, 1-20, Lexington Books, 2016
In Irving Epstein (ed.), The Whole World is Texting: Youth Protest in the Information Age, 25-43. Pittsburgh: Sense Publishers, 2015., May 27, 2015
Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, 2019
Baker Institute for Public Policy, 2019
In this paper, I first summarize the results of an original survey on religious authority in Turk... more In this paper, I first summarize the results of an original survey on religious authority in Turkey and discuss how much credibility and trust Turkish citizens confer to different public figures as sources of religious authority. Then, I discuss the role of official religious authorities such as the Diyanet (the Directorate of Religious Affairs) and state religious
schools in bolstering the AKP’s political hegemony. The third section examines Ihsan Eliaçık’s Islamic political philosophy and delineates his pluralist, egalitarian, and democratic interpretations and how these differ from the AKP’s authoritarian Islamism. Lastly, I map AKP sympathizers’ views on key issues such as religious tolerance, belief in multivocality of
religion, corruption, democracy, gender equality, and the role of religion in politics, and compare their perspectives to those of supporters of the religious opposition in Turkey in an attempt to understand whether and how Eliaçık’s liberal democratic Islamic ideology resonates with his social base.
Relations between immigrants and African Americans increasingly draw the attention of policy-make... more Relations between immigrants and African Americans increasingly draw the attention of policy-makers,
researchers, community organizers, and community members alike. Sheer force of numbers accounts for
much of this interest. Latinos, many of them immigrants or the children of immigrants, now outnumber
African Americans nationally, and many of the nation’s largest cities already are “minority-majority.” Actual
and perceived tensions between the groups also attract attention. From gang violence to political
representation, from labor concerns to negative stereotypes, black Americans and immigrants are
engaging each other on a range of issues. In many communities, including some in the South, Midwest,
and Northeast previously marked almost exclusively by black-white interactions, inter-minority relations
feature more prominently on the political agenda than white-minority relationships do.
Many progressives, in particular, also note that during this generation-long American era of deepening
inequality between the most affluent Americans and everyone else, African Americans and immigrants
number disproportionately among our nation’s truly disadvantaged. Increasingly, we also hear nonprofit
leaders, advocates, community members and even some elected officials pushing the observation about
the communities’ common challenges one step further. Rather than succumb to largely structural
inducements to regard each other as rivals, they argue, the interests of black Americans and immigrants
would be served best by deliberate, strategic collaboration between them.
In light of this range of interests in relationships between the communities, in this report we highlight the
challenges and opportunities that characterize collaborative efforts between immigrant and African
American communities in the United States. The five examples presented do not represent the full range
of efforts that could be described as alliances. Rather, we focused our efforts specifically on alliances
that, 1) involve one or more social justice organizations with a primarily African American constituency; 2)
involve one or more social justice organizations with a significant immigrant constituency; 3) work on
specific policy advocacy that is a common concern of both constituencies. Most of the information offered
here was gathered in the course of interviews, conducted between November 2007 and September 2008,
with 46 individuals representing 32 social justice organizations.
Many historical, structural, and cultural barriers sometimes interfere with collaboration attempts between
African Americans and immigrants. Historical challenges include the legacy of U.S. immigration policies
such as the Bracero program that fueled immigration to the U.S. for many years and recent controversies
around comprehensive immigration reform. Structural challenges are also significant, including the
socioeconomic marginalization that affects both African Americans and immigrants and the fact that the
communities often share residential neighborhoods, provoking tensions over the allocation of limited
resources. These strains are compounded by cultural barriers such as the misperceptions that the
communities harbor about each other, the existence of an anti-immigrant wedge movement, and the
prevalence of a conflict narrative in the mainstream media that encourages a zero-sum mentality among
both groups. Nevertheless, as demonstrated by our case studies, opportunities to unite and to achieve
important policy successes exist.
The syllabus of my POL 349, "Topics in Middle East Politics" course for Spring 2016 semester
Book Review of Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics: A Comparative Study of Israel and Tur... more Book Review of Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics: A Comparative Study of Israel and Turkey, Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.
Review of Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics: A Comparative Study of Israel and Turkey, ... more Review of Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics: A Comparative Study of Israel and Turkey, Routledge, 2013
Review of Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics: A Comparative Study of Israel and Turkey, ... more Review of Mobilizing Religion in Middle East Politics: A Comparative Study of Israel and Turkey, Routledge, 2013
Politics
Turkey under the AKP governments constitutes an exemplary case for understanding how centralized ... more Turkey under the AKP governments constitutes an exemplary case for understanding how centralized religion, authoritarianism, and economic logic of neoliberalism interrelate. AKP uses state-guided religion to legitimize its neoliberal economic policies and create docile, economized citizens. This article specifically focuses on how pious Muslims resist AKP’s religious neoliberalism by focusing on actions and deliberations of Labor and Justice Platform members. Our discussion, which consists of face-to-face interviews with the members of this social movement, delineates the group’s justice-oriented, egalitarian, and pluralist orientation of Islam and depicts their dialogues with power – embodied in AKP’s domination of Islamic discourse in Turkey. We discuss how group members reinterpret religious concepts such as kader (fate), kısmet (destiny), and sabır (patience) that the AKP uses as micro-discursive mechanisms to create economically compliant citizens. We also discuss the specific ...