Review: Modernity, Islam and Secularism in Turkey: Bodies, Places, and Time, on the Political

2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-586
Author(s):  
Banu Gokariksel ◽  
Ayten Gundogdu
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Islam And Secularism

Politics and Islam in Turkey

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmet Erdi Öztürk ◽  
İştar Gözaydın
Keyword(s):  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Founding Fathers ◽  
State Management ◽  
Majority Population ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Islam And Secularism

Since 1937, Turkey has been officially defined as a secular state, albeit with a Muslim-majority population. However, secularism in the Turkish context is distinctive, a product of its particular historical experience and development. Both the Ottoman heritage and contemporary Turkey’s Kemalist founding fathers’ apprehension were decisive factors in the evolution of Turkish secularism (laiklik) and set Turkey’s experience apart from that of other modern secular states. Turkish understanding of secularism itself has never had one single, unambiguous interpretation in Turkey, but in general it is widely understood that it reflects a sense that the state should not be totally blind to religious issues, but also should never favor one particular religion over another. Thus, Islamic practice was carried over in the society from the Ottoman state to the new Turkish Republic and allowed republican elites to declare a new structural order, without losing hegemonic power over religion. At the same time, the older Ottoman tradition of state management of religion was retained. For this reason and as a continuation of a social and political heritage from the Byzantium Empire, the Presidency of Religious Affairs (hereinafter the Diyanet) was established in March 1924 in the wake of the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate and its associated institutions, including the Şeriye Vekaleti (Ministry of Religious Affairs) and the Evkaf (Pious Foundations). Even though the Diyanet started its journey as a protector of both religion (read the Oxford Bibliographies article “Sunni Islam”) and secularism, it started as a promoter of raison d’etat’s Islamic understanding, and afterward it was instrumentalized by dominant political structures. In this regard, Turkey’s attitudes and the Diyanet’s different positions regarding Islamic issues, as well as various sociological phenomena in Turkish society, have always played a determinant role in the political arena. Under these circumstances, Islam in Turkey, and its status in the political arena, has been contentious in different areas, such as the historical heritage of Islam’s role in politics, Alevism and other Islamic sects, non-Muslim others and minorities, Islamic communities and cults, institutional Islam, and women and LGBT rights. Furthermore, Turkey has been coming face to face with a new experience over the second decade of the new millennium: the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP) and its authoritarian shift through instrumentalizing the religion. The party’s leadership, mostly coming from an Islamist background, recast itself as conservative democrats. They promised a new social contract between the state and society and called for a series of liberal reforms that would enhance the separation of powers, the independence of the judiciary, the freedom of the press, and the rule of law. Yet since 2011, the AKP has opened discussions advocating for a change from parliamentary democracy to establish an executive presidential system to consolidate its power, and Islam is one of the prominent pillars of this new process. In this respect, political Islam has been the subject of various studies in such diverse disciplines as political science, international relations, sociology, history, anthropology, religious studies, and gender studies. The sources cited here serve as a guide to the politics of Islam in Turkey, and they broadly offer an introduction to a deeper engagement with the literature.

The Social Origins and Provenance of the English Bishops during the Reign of Edward II

1959 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 51-79
Author(s):  
K. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Early Career ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
The Social ◽  
Complete Study ◽  
History Of

During the last twenty or twenty-five years medieval historians have been much interested in the composition of the English episcopate. A number of studies of it have been published on periods ranging from the eleventh to the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A further paper might well seem superfluous. My reason for offering one is that most previous writers have concentrated on analysing the professional circles from which the bishops were drawn, and suggesting the influences which their early careers as royal clerks, university masters and students, secular or regular clergy, may have had on their later work as bishops. They have shown comparatively little interest in their social background and provenance, except for those bishops who belonged to magnate families. Some years ago, when working on the political activities of Edward II's bishops, it seemed to me that social origins, family connexions and provenance might in a number of cases have had at least as much influence on a bishop's attitude to politics as his early career. I there fore collected information about the origins and provenance of these bishops. I now think that a rather more careful and complete study of this subject might throw further light not only on the political history of the reign, but on other problems connected with the character and work of the English episcopate. There is a general impression that in England in the later middle ages the bishops' ties with their dioceses were becoming less close, and that they were normally spending less time in diocesan work than their predecessors in the thirteenth century.

Democrazy—Dem Go Craze, O: Monitoring the 1999 Nigerian Elections

1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Darren Kew
Keyword(s):  
Transition Program ◽  
The Political ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Soccer Match ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Military

In many respects, the least important part of the 1999 elections were the elections themselves. From the beginning of General Abdusalam Abubakar’s transition program in mid-1998, most Nigerians who were not part of the wealthy “political class” of elites—which is to say, most Nigerians— adopted their usual politically savvy perspective of siddon look (sit and look). They waited with cautious optimism to see what sort of new arrangement the military would allow the civilian politicians to struggle over, and what in turn the civilians would offer the public. No one had any illusions that anything but high-stakes bargaining within the military and the political class would determine the structures of power in the civilian government. Elections would influence this process to the extent that the crowd influences a soccer match.

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