Divine warning or prelude to secularization? Religion, politics, and the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey

Religion was a major pillar in the government's pandemic management and featured centrally in a string of public controversies in the course of the coronavirus crisis in Turkey. This article analyzes the role of Islam in the political and social responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey, with a focus on four dimensions: (1) religion as a tool of governance, (2) the regulation of collective religious practices, (3) religious interpretations of the pandemic, and (4) predictions about the future impact of the coronavirus crisis on religion. Based on this analysis, the study concludes that the salience and political function of religion in the course of pandemics are contingent upon the place of religious mobilization in the political repertoire of the ruling party and the balance of power between the government and the religious field, respectively. The government's extensive instrumentalization of religion in pandemic management, on the other hand, is likely to give rise to a political backlash against organized religion

Is Turkey a postsecular society? Secular differentiation, committed pluralism, and complementary learning in contemporary Turkey

This chapter investigates democratic politics and religious pluralism in contemporary Turkey through the lens of the concept of “postsecular society.” The author first reconstructs Habermas’s notion of postsecular society as an ideal type and proposes three criteria by which one can identify postsecular formations: secular differentiation, committed pluralism, and complementary learning processes. He then utilizes this framework to investigate relations between religion, state, and civil society in contemporary Turkey, focusing in particular on compulsory religious instruction in primary and secondary schools, the standing of atheism and unbelief in the public realm, and the rise and political suppression of a postsecular ethics of citizenship in the course of the Gezi protests of 2013. This analysis demonstrates that the concept of postsecular society, when applied critically, provides a powerful tool for identifying the forces for and against religious pluralism in contemporary societies, including those outside Europe

The politics of secularism: religion, diversity, and institutional change in France and Turkey

This article uncovers the relationship between the intra-paradigm power struggle of two rival political parties in 1970s Turkey and their identity formations. Given the economy-laden context of Turkish-European relations in the 1970s, the (re)production of Europe as an identificatory reference between the National Salvation Party (NSP) and the Justice Party (JP) is of special interest. This investigation will help shed light on how the power relations-that both actors were situated in-can be mirrored through their struggle for identity. Moreover, will it contribute to highlighting the functionality of foreign policy in the production of identity. In analytical terms, this study borrows case-restricted concepts from the post-structuralist theory of international relations, and gathers its case data from the 1970s National Assembly records

Türkiye'de popüler kültür ve siyaset: Kızılcık Şerbeti tartışması

Dindar-muhafazakâr ve seküler iki aile arasındaki etkileşimi konu alan popüler televizyon dizisi Kızılcık Şerbeti’nin Mayıs 2023’teki kritik seçimlere yaklaşık bir ay kala Radyo ve Televizyon Üst Kurulu (RTÜK) tarafından cezalandırılması, kamusal alanda hararetli tartışmaları da beraberinde getirdi. Dizideki Nursema karakteri bu süreçte siyasi bir sembol niteliği kazanarak birçok politik tartışmanın merkezinde yer aldı. Makale, Kızılcık Şerbeti dizisi etrafındaki tartışmalardan yola çıkarak, Türkiye’de popüler kültür ile siyaset arasındaki ilişkileri incelemektedir. Çalışma kurmaca popüler kültürün toplumun kendi dinamikleri üzerine düşünmesi ve siyasi meseleleri tartışması için önemli bir alan açtığı sonucuna ulaşmaktadır. Araştırmanın bulguları aynı zamanda sansürün belirli koşullarda nesnesine duyulan popüler ilgiyi artırarak amaçlananın aksine sonuç verdiğine dair ‘Streisand etkisi’ hipotezini desteklemektedir

The politicization of religion: political Catholicism and political Islam in comparative perspective

While religious politics have been a widely discussed topic in the social sciences in recent decades, few studies develop general explanations based on systematic and detailed comparative analysis. This article seeks to explain when and how successful religious parties rise. To that end, I comparatively analyze the politicization of German Catholicism in the second half of the nineteenth century (1848–1878) and Turkish Islam in the post-1970 period (1970–2002) and briefly examine the negative case of nineteenth-century German Protestantism. According to the theory of revival-reaction-politicization I propose, successful religious parties rise when major religious revivals confront social counter-mobilization and state repression, provided that existing political parties do not effectively represent religious defense. The study's findings challenge the pervasive tendency to treat Christian and Islamic politics as incommensurable