The Nation and its Sermons: Islam, Kemalism and the Presidency of Religious Affairs in Turkey (original) (raw)
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Turks have had a strong connection to Islam religion for a long time. After the eighth century when they began to accept Islam, their relations with Islam and Islamic communities increased more and more depending on the expanding geographies of the Turkish states. Anatolia, now called Turkey, harbours many different religions although the dominant one is Islam. Besides such factors as traditions, customs, and language, religion has also a great influence on shaping one’s or a community’s identity. Although religion was an important part of Turkish identity, it began to lose its effectiveness especially after the foundation of Turkish Republic. Due to the Westernization and modernization movements in this term, Islamic traditions and principles began to lose their dominance on people across the country. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the changing Turkish Muslim identity in a secularizing environment beginning with the 20th century, and to show how the technological and scientific changes in Europe influenced the core of Turkish Muslim identity. Keywords: Turkish identity, Islam, modernization, Westernization, identity crisis
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2016
The issue concerning identity and ethnic and religious affiliation in the Republic of Turkey has traditionally been considered a taboo subject. The secular era of Ataturk, the founder of Turkey, banned any expression of ethnic and religious activity. Moderate Islamic Turkey of Erdogan times is also not a supporter of activation of ethnic segments of the country, although in the terms of religion it conducts a vivid demonstration of the forces of the Sunni majority without taking into account ethnicity of Sunni residing in Turkey. However, the foreign policy changes of emphasis in the Middle East are a reflection of global processes; they require a rethinking of Islamic values and their role in the context of current realities. As a result of the sharp increasing of refugees and the release of the migration process from the control of the European Union, the Turkish Republic has acquired the status of a buffer zone for migrants, aimed at obtaining asylum in the developed EU countries...
Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets
Since 1937, Turkey has been officially defined as a secular state, albeit with a Muslim-majority population. However, secularism in the Turkish context is distinctive, a product of its particular historical experience and development. Both the Ottoman heritage and contemporary Turkey’s Kemalist founding fathers’ apprehension were decisive factors in the evolution of Turkish secularism (laiklik) and set Turkey’s experience apart from that of other modern secular states. Turkish understanding of secularism itself has never had one single, unambiguous interpretation in Turkey, but in general it is widely understood that it reflects a sense that the state should not be totally blind to religious issues, but also should never favor one particular religion over another. Thus, Islamic practice was carried over in the society from the Ottoman state to the new Turkish Republic and allowed republican elites to declare a new structural order, without losing hegemonic power over religion. At th...