Webinar: Rethinking the Rise of Religious Politics: Perspectives from Turkey

By Dr Ceren Lord, Department of Politics and International Relations and St Anthony’s College, University of Oxford
Discussant: Joakim Parslow

The rise of religious movements since the 1970s has been widely conceptualised as reflecting a reaction or grassroots mobilisation against the crisis and authoritarianism of the modern secular state and colonialism. Scholarship on Turkey has mirrored these perspectives, viewing religious movements, particularly the emergence of Islamism as the mobilisation of a ‘Muslim society’ in reaction to the authoritarian secularist and Kemalist Turkish state. In contrast, through the exploration of the Turkish case, it will be argued that religious politics in Turkey and beyond should not be seen as a break from the secular state project, but as a path-dependent process occurring within the longer-term dynamics of nation-state building. Focusing on the role of the Turkish state body and chief Islamic authority, the Presidency of Religious Affairs, the presentation will show how in the Turkish case religion was incorporated within the early stages of nation-state building and Islamist mobilisation facilitated from 'within' and not just 'outside' the state.