Religious Groups in the Face of Turkey Modernization

Journal Title: insan & toplum - Year 2017, Vol 7, Issue 1

Abstract

It is generally emphasized that there is a close relationship between modernization and secularization. Turkey’s modernization process can be regarded as a secularization process of religion, society and politics in relation to Turkey’s sociological and historical reality. In the process, a cultural and political distance has developed between the old and the traditional and the new and modern. Many innovations that began to be discussed after the II. Constitutional period and passed on to the social life after the establishment of the republic were interpreted as a result of the policy of secularization of the new government. The modernization of the republic has caused a social division on the basis of secularism. Religious groups and communities, which have been the producers of the traditional religious structure of the society for many years, are defined by the ones in power as “the other” in this division. The loss of legitimacy of those religious groups in the public sphere did not mean that they were destroyed, but it often caused them to go underground in order to continue their existence. Religious groups were in a tense relationship with the state during the single-party rule, after transition to multi-party system, they have had a pragmatic relationship with politics. Political parties also observed a similar benefit relationship with religious groups. Although bureaucratic structures showed similar reflexes to that in the single party period during the period when politics was interfered by military coups, mutual benefit dialect continued to be produced in terms of politics and religious groups with the return of democracy. The period of February 28 and AK Party ruling also attracted attention as different periods in terms of the position of religious groups in the modernization of Turkey.

Authors and Affiliations

Mahmut Hakkı Akın

Keywords

Related Articles

Polanyi’s Criticisms on Modern Economics’ Conception of the Human Being

Discipline of economics, who already assimilated the mathematical and technical tools as a base for the expression of theory is almost lost its identity as a social science. This process has become visible through some h...

Avrupamerkezciliği Eleştirmek: Çıkmazlar ve Alternatif Bakışlar

Eurocentrism is a grand narrative changing with time and transforming under different contexts. Many critics of this grand narrative have not yet managed to go beyond what they have criticized. In this article, we aim to...

A Conflict on Baha‘ism and Islam in 1922: Abdullah Cevdet and State Religious Agencies

This paper investigates Abdullah Cevdet’s 1922 article on Baha’ism as well the reaction of the state authorities, particularly that of two Meşihat councils. After briefly discussing the author’s biography and journalisti...

The Influence of Time on Artworks: A Hermeneutical Reading of Holocaust Films

This article’s aim is to focus on the close relationship that exists between the notions of prejudice and historicity and the time in which a film director of genocide lives and the extent to which their temporality unav...

Claude Lévi-Strauss’ta Mitos

Humankind has been continuously trying to interpret the universe they live in and the existence they have since coming into being. How the sky, the earth, the seas and the mountains were created have an important place i...

Download PDF file
  • EP ID EP316229
  • DOI 10.12658/human.society.7.13.M0213
  • Views 103
  • Downloads 0

How To Cite

Mahmut Hakkı Akın (2017). Religious Groups in the Face of Turkey Modernization. insan & toplum, 7(1), 1-24. https://europub.co.uk/articles/-A-316229