Death and Funerals in Sunni Communities of Turkey (original) (raw)

Abstract This study discusses the perception of death and funerals in Sunni Moslem communities of Turkey whilst evaluating Islamic culture and urbanised society. The main theme is to understand the attitudes of the urbanised Islamic Sunni society toward the death phenomenon in metropolitan cities provincial towns particularly in Ankara and Marmaris. Emphasis is placed on changes in attitudes over time, in the light of comparisons between Ottoman and modern Turkish culture. Graves, tombs, tombstones, epitaphs and cemeteries are also discussed from the viewpoint of Islamic culture. With these objectives, the study begins with the analysis of the concept of death. In order to carry out the study, a method approaching the subject from four disparate points has been employed. First, literature was surveyed to gain an understanding of the meaning of death in present-day society. Second, the Islamic canon was reviewed with regard to the death phenomenon. Third, reflexive narratives originating from personal observations as a participant in the funerals of my family members’ were employed in this study. The fourth and last field of research includes field observations and photographs from Karşıyaka Cemetery in Ankara, and copies of photographs from several other sources in order to identify the divergence of the modern from traditional. The major verdict of this study is that in modern Islamic culture, in contrast to its earlier traditional evaluation, death is sequestrated from social communal life and assigned to the status of an institutional event. Key words: death, funerals, cemetery, tombstone, Islam, modernism, urbanised society.