Secularism in Turkey as a Nationalist Search for Vernacular Islam: The Ban on the Call to Prayer in Arabic (1932-1950) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Secularism and State Religion in Modern Turkey : Law, Policy-Making and the Diyanet
The Diyanet, the official face of Islam in Turkey, is the ‘Presidency of Religious Affairs’, a governmental department established in 1924 after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire and with the abolition of Caliphate. In this book, Emir Kaya offers an in-depth multidisciplinary analysis of this vital institution. Focusing on the role of the Diyanet in society, Kaya explores the balance the institution has to strike between the Muslim traditions of the Turkish population and the secular creed of the Turkish state. By examining the various laws that either bolstered or hindered the Diyanet’s budgets and activities, Kaya highlights the institutional mindsets of the Diyanet membership. He also evaluates its successes and failures as a state department that must consistently operate within the context of the religiosity of Turkish society. By situating all of this within the two competing – but often complimentary – concepts of religion and secularism, Kaya offers a book that is important for those researching the interplay of Islam and the state in Turkey and beyond.
Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization
This paper offers a critical analysis of the body of offices responsible for the regulation of the public religious affairs in Turkey with a historical perspective from the Ottoman Empire to the current Republican period. The paper has a specific goal to explore how the public bodies regulating the religious life have played their role for the purpose of ensuring political and social control in the country by reviewing the religious institution during the Ottoman era and comparing within the Republican period under three different ruling ages: the Republican People’s Party, the multi-party and the AK Party. A significant volume of research has been conducted on the various aspects of public religious offices; and have been reviewed for this purpose by using historical research design. The findings show that during the Ottoman Empire, the regulation of the spiritual life was marked by a strong influence of the Sheikh ul-Islam . However, this institution experienced a huge decline aft...
The cleavage between the secular Kemalists and the political Islamists has been salient throughout the history of Republican Turkey. On the one hand, an identity based on Turkish nationalism and laicisim put forward by the Kemalist elite during the inception of the Republic has been prevalent in state institutions. On the other hand, a movement which aims to revive Islam as an identity both socially and politically has risen in response to this Kemalist project. An important institution established during the early years of the Republic, which aimed at disseminating official Islam, is the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı, DİB). Within the context of the Kemalist-Islamist cleavage, this thesis aims to show how the official Islam adopted by the DİB has changed. Specifically, the DİB has moved from representing the Kemalist idea of Islam to representing the version of Islam adopted by the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), successors to the political Islam movement. The thesis argues that AKP has achieved this change through a process of “desecularization”, once it reached “commanding heights” after the 2010 Constitutional Referendum. To show this change, 696 Friday sermons published by the Istanbul Müftü’s Office (İstanbul İl Müftülüğü) are analyzed using a mixed methods approach. The analysis finds that there is a clear distinction between the two periods analyzed across various themes, such as the idea of the nation, ethnicity, terrorism and science.
Diyanet: The Turkish Directorate for Religious Affairs
The team 'influence from abroad' is an extremely difficult issue. After finalising two national reports, we decided to structure the final project report along four main dimensions (explained below). Following a general historical account of Islam in Turkey (chapter 2), the first dimension concerns the
İSLAM'IN MİLLİLEŞTİRİLMESİNDEN MİLLİYETÇİLİĞİN ÖZELLEŞTİRİLMESİNE: İSLAMİYET VE TÜRK MİLLİ KİMLİĞİ
ÖZET Bu makale Türkiye'de dinin millileştirilmesi ile ilgili farklı projeleri içermektedir. ilk önerilen projeler islam ve laikliğin birarada yaşayabilmesini sağlayabilecek felsefi temelden yoksun oldukları için başarılı olamamışlardır. Dinin millileştirilmesi konusunda daha önce yapılan çalışmalardan farklı olarak bu makale konuyu Soğuk Savaş dönemine taşıyarak Türk-İslam Sentezi'nin dinin millileştirilmesi çabalarının ulaştığı son aşama olduğu tezini vurgulamaktadır. TİS'in Atatürkçülük rejimini değiştirme gibi bir hedefi olmaması ve İslam'ın milliyetçilik, laiklik ve Atatürkçülük ile uyum içinde olduğu görüşlerini savunması TİS'in aranan milli din olmasa bile İslam ve laik devlet arasında bir sistem ayarlaması yapmasını sağlamış ve İslam'ın gayr-i resmi olarak Türklük tanımına dahil olmasını sağlamıştır. ABSTRACT This article traces the origins of various proposals to nationalize Islam in Turkey. The initial Turkish proposals failed because none of them had a feasible philosophical base to facilitate the coexistence of Islam and secularism. Aside from the previous studies on the nationalization of Islam, this article carries the topic to the Cold War by arguing that the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis was the last stage on the nationalization of Islam. Since TIS had no vision to alter the official ideology, Kemalism, and it claimed the compatibility of Islam, nationalism, secularism as well as Kemalism, it fulfilled the need of a national religion the Turkish state envisioned but it created a de facto Turkish national identity that made Islam a prerequisite for Turkishness.
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...