Hakan Özoğlu, From Caliphate to Secular State: Power Struggle in the Early Turkish Republic (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2011). Pp. 218. $34.95 cloth.

AbstractFollowing the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the twin goals of centralizing state power and inscribing a uniform national identity on all citizens resulted in the proliferation of disciplinary practices that required changes in habits and everyday life as well as in the locus of faith, allegiance, and obedience. Nowhere were the repercussions felt as deeply as in the Kurdish regions, where the urge to create a new citizen sparked considerable resistance. This article suggests that alongside Kurdish nationalist movements, kinship networks and morality constituted an alternative reservoir of resistance to the new disciplinary practices that followed state building. By subverting state practices to make citizens legible, kinship networks, I argue, undermined the state's attempts to establish bureaucratic authority and create an exclusive identity.

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WOMEN PREACHING FOR THE SECULAR STATE: OFFICIAL FEMALE PREACHERS (BAYAN VAIZLER) IN CONTEMPORARY TURKEY

International Journal of Middle East Studies ◽

10.1017/s0020743811000614 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 43 (3) ◽

pp. 451-473 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

Mona Hassan

Keyword(s):

Religious Education ◽

Turkish Republic ◽

The Past ◽

State Official ◽

Politics Of Religion ◽

Republic Of Turkey ◽

Turkish Society ◽

Secular State

AbstractNearly one-third of Turkey's official preaching workforce are women. Their numbers have risen considerably over the past two decades, fueled by an unforeseen feminization of higher religious education as well as the Directorate of Religious Affairs’ attempts to redress its historical gender imbalances. Created in the early Turkish Republic, the Directorate is also historically embedded in (re)defining the appropriate domains and formations of religion, and the female preachers it now employs navigate people's potent fears rooted in memories of this fraught past. In the various neighborhoods of Istanbul, these preachers attempt to overcome conservative Muslims’ cautious ambivalence toward the interpretative and disciplinary powers of a secular state as well as assertive secularists’ discomfort and suspicion over increasingly visible manifestations of religiosity. Thus, the activities of state-sponsored female preachers are inescapably intertwined with the contestation of religious domains and authority in the secular Republic of Turkey and demonstrate an intricate interplay between the politics of religion, gender, and secularism in contemporary Turkish society.

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Hubal

Redeeming Anthropology ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198796435.003.0003 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 143-173

Author(s):

Khaled Furani

Keyword(s):

State Power ◽

The Moon ◽

Secular State

Heuristically evoking Hubal, an ancient Arabian god of the moon, the unknown, and divination, this chapter employs idolatry, a central category of critique from monotheistic theology, to explore ways in which anthropology falls prey to disorientations, conflations, and unwarranted concessions in its study of multiplicity. Concerned with a particular form of idolatry whereby the finite is taken for the infinite, entailing confusion about ends worthy of a life’s devotion, this chapter examines how “culture” and its cognates function as idols in anthropodom. It argues that by conceding to secular state power, and ultimately to principles of sovereignty, anthropology becomes complicit in a wider idolatry that unnecessarily limits its very capacities of reason.

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Symbolic Politics and Contention in the Turkish Republic

The Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190064891.013.20 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Senem Aslan

Keyword(s):

State Power ◽

Unintended Consequences ◽

Political Support ◽

Political Polarization ◽

Political Movements ◽

Symbolic Politics ◽

Turkish Republic ◽

Material Benefits ◽

The Relationship ◽

Symbolic Practices

This chapter examines how different state actors in Turkey have used symbolic practices to govern and transform society. Based on examples largely drawn from the single party era (1923–1950) and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, it discusses three separate functions that symbolic practices serve. First, it analyzes the relationship between symbolic politics and legitimation of state authority and ideology. Second, it focuses on how symbolic politics can be used for coercive purposes, signaling state power and omnipresence. Finally, it examines the state’s efforts to use symbolism for cooptation purposes, communicating the material benefits that it provides to citizens in exchange for political support. Calling attention to unintended consequences, the chapter underlines how symbols usually generate contention and become a means of struggle between the state and dissident political movements. In the Turkish context, extensive use of symbolic politics has created hardened political identities, curtailing meaningful deliberation and undermining common norms. The Turkish example shows that symbolic politics can exacerbate political polarization by sharpening cultural contestation and invoking strong emotions in society.

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New Way of Turkey?

World Economy and International Relations ◽

10.20542/0131-2227-2012-6-90-101 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 90-101

Author(s):

N. Ul'chenko

Keyword(s):

Economic Development ◽

Foreign Policy ◽

Growth Model ◽

Political Actor ◽

Turkish Republic ◽

Basic Premise ◽

Ruling Party ◽

Freedom Of Action ◽

Secular State

The article covers the basic premise of Turkey's significance as a regional and international political actor from the beginning of ХХIst century. Turkey achieved notable success in economic development, but in the frame of the chosen growth model it didn't manage to solve to problem of the economy peg to external finacing sources. Nevertheless, definite economic achievements gave the ruling Party of Justice and Development confidence in attempting to pursue a more active and independent foreign policy. But during this process, the intrinsic limits of the Turkish elite's freedom of action are visible enough. The Islamist ruling Party uses its economic and political strides to revise the domestic political establishment system of the Turkish Republic. It serves not only and not so much the interests of the country's democratization, as ensures the gradual empowerement of religious-conservative part of the electorate – the main pillar of the Party for Justice and Development – in Turkish Republic, once founded as a secular state.

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