Contemporary Turkey At A Glance

Turkey has witnessed significant social, cultural, and political change over the last decades. This transformation has manifested itself in all segments of society and resulted in the alteration of political ideologies and institutions. The twelve authors of this volume shed light on the complexities of a changing Turkey through an interdisciplinary perspective. Their application of novel conceptual approaches and methodologies make this book a unique contribution to the study of modern Turkey.

This volume is a collection of papers that address multiple issues of contemporary Turkish politics, presented at the “Contemporary Turkey at a Glance: Turkey Transformed? Power, History, Culture” conference. Articles on foreign policy analyze the impact of the changing dynamics in the region following the Arab Uprisings. The pressing issues of the role of the strong one party government on the transformation of political institutions and the relations between the state and the citizens, and whether there is a trend towards authoritarianism are debated. The wide range of issues extends to the formation of identity in the transnational communities, the projection of historical events, the challenges to the legal system, and last but not the least, the established categories of religion and gender.

A fascinating ethnography of the Diyanet's women sessions in Istanbul illuminating the current reconfigurations of Islam in Turkey.

Nineteenth-century Istanbul was an intellectual hub of rich discussions about Islam, in which leading reformists had a significant role. Turkey today appears to be an intellectual vacuum to anyone searching for ongoing critical engagement with Islam. The main purpose of this book is to adjust this view of Turkey by showcasing the modern Turkish theologians who challenge mainstream Sunni interpretations of Islam. Labelling these theologians as 'rationalist' rather than 'reformist', the author reveals that their theology is inherently anti-establishment and thus a religiously-oriented challenge to the hegemony of the state-sanctioned Islam: for the rationalists, Turkey's problems have their origins in the Sunni interpretation of Islam. Contemporary Rationalist Islam in Turkey analyses nine prominent scholars of Islam who provide a religious opposition to the Sunni revival in Turkey: Hüseyin Atay, Yasar Nuri Öztürk, M. Hayri Kirbasoglu, Ilhami Güler, R. Ihsan Eliaçik, Ömer Özsoy, Mustafa Öztürk, Israfil Balci, and Mehmet Azimli. These scholars' writings are almost exclusively published in Turkish, so this book makes their ideas available in English for the first time. It also examines the scope, methodology and argumentation of the scholars' theology, categorizing their theological interpretations from 'historicist' to 'universalist' and from 'empiricist' to 'rationalist'. In identifying a new 'rationalist' school of Turkish theology and outlining its different manifestations, the book breaks new ground. It fills a significant gap in the literature on Islamic studies and reveals an understudied dimension of Turkey and Turkish Islam beyond the well-known ideas of the AKP and the Gulenists.

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New perspectives on ethnic relations, Islam and neoliberalism have emerged in Turkey since the rise of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002. Placing the period within its historical and contemporary context, Tahir Abbas argues that what it is to be ethnically, religiously and culturally Turkish has been transformed. He explores how issues of political trust, social capital and intolerance towards minorities have characterised Turkey in the early years of the 21st-century. He shows how a radical neoliberal economic and conservative outlook has materialised, leading to a clash over the religious, political and cultural direction of Turkey. These conflicts are defining the future of the nation.

Presents an account of the rise of Erdogan's AKP, showing how the politicisation of religion has roots in the period of early nation-building in Turkey.