Ihsan Yilmaz

Ismail Albayrak

This book explores state–religion relations under a populist authoritarian ruling party in Turkey. In doing so, it investigates how the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) instrumentalizes state-controlled religion to further, defend, legitimatize and propagate its authoritarian populist political agenda in a constitutionally secular nation-state. To exemplify this, the authors examine the Friday sermons delivered weekly in every mosque in Turkey by the Turkish State’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). By analyzing all sermons delivered between 2010-2021, the book shows how the Diyanet has enthusiastically adopted AKP’s increasingly Islamist, authoritarian, civilisationist, militarist and pro-violence populism since 2010, and how it has tried to socially engineer beliefs in line with this ideology.

The Diyanet’s Construction of Erdoğanist Islam in Turkey

Populist and Pro-Violence State Religion

Salih Yucel

The global threat of war, terrorism, the increased gap between poor and rich, famine, malnutrition, global warming and pollution, and many other social and cultural problems, pose a real challenge for present citizens of the globe. Intellectuals and politicians take these challenges as their primary concerns. Despite the existence of some pessimists, there are a number of initiatives working for the common good and expending great effort to solve these problems. The Hizmet (Gulen) Movement is one of the most influential initiatives that should be taken into consideration in this context. Fethullah Gulen is a Turkish Muslim scholar whose ideas have inspired and influenced many Turkish intellectuals, educators, students, businessmen, politicians and journalists inside and outside Turkey to establish schools, educational and intercultural centers, and humanitarian aid organizations in more than one hundred fifty countries. Yucel and Albayrak cover the Hizmet Movement under the leadership of Fethullah Gulen from various perspectives in order to shed lights on current discussions.

Ismail Albayrak

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