The transnational politics of religion: Turkey's Diyanet, Islamic communities and beyond

Ahmet Erdi Öztürk; Bahar Baser

doi:10.1080/14683849.2022.2068414

The transnational politics of religion: Turkey's Diyanet, Islamic communities and beyond

Ahmet Erdi Öztürk, Bahar Baser

Research Centre for Peace and Security

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

The article builds on current academic debates pertaining to the use of religion in global politics. By examining how and why religion is used as a tool for foreign policy aims as well as for perpetuating a state’s identity and institutional capacity at home and abroad; the article presents a theory-informed discussion on Turkey’s transnational politics of religion from a comparative perspective. The country’s use of religion as a political tool outside of its borders has been studied in Western Europe, Africa, Asia and the Balkans thanks to extensive fieldwork and interviews conducted between 2016 and 2020. The article investigates how and why Turkey has implemented similar policies with different aims in different geographic territories and the underlying material and normative motivations for this pursuit. The main argument presented in the article is that Turkey, under the rule of the AKP (Justice and Development Party), employs religion for three fundamental reasons: to bolster its regional and global influence, to access regions or groups that are difficult to reach through traditional foreign policy tools and to alter domestic political balances or amass power.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	701-721
Number of pages	21
Journal	Turkish Studies
Volume	23
Issue number	5
Early online date	8 May 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2022.2068414
Publication status	Published - 20 Oct 2022

Bibliographical note

This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Turkish Studies. Öztürk, AE & Baser, B 2022, 'The transnational politics of religion: Turkey's Diyanet, Islamic communities and beyond', Turkish Studies, vol. 23, no. 5, pp. 701-721. https://doi.org/10.1080/14683849.2022.2068414.

It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Funder

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 891305. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

Turkey
religion
soft power
diyanet
islam
AKP

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10.1080/14683849.2022.2068414

Post-PrintAccepted author manuscript, 1.27 MBLicence: CC BY-NC

Cite this

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title = "The transnational politics of religion: Turkey's Diyanet, Islamic communities and beyond",

abstract = "The article builds on current academic debates pertaining to the use of religion in global politics. By examining how and why religion is used as a tool for foreign policy aims as well as for perpetuating a state{\textquoteright}s identity and institutional capacity at home and abroad; the article presents a theory-informed discussion on Turkey{\textquoteright}s transnational politics of religion from a comparative perspective. The country{\textquoteright}s use of religion as a political tool outside of its borders has been studied in Western Europe, Africa, Asia and the Balkans thanks to extensive fieldwork and interviews conducted between 2016 and 2020. The article investigates how and why Turkey has implemented similar policies with different aims in different geographic territories and the underlying material and normative motivations for this pursuit. The main argument presented in the article is that Turkey, under the rule of the AKP (Justice and Development Party), employs religion for three fundamental reasons: to bolster its regional and global influence, to access regions or groups that are difficult to reach through traditional foreign policy tools and to alter domestic political balances or amass power.",

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The transnational politics of religion: Turkey's Diyanet, Islamic communities and beyond

Abstract

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Keywords

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