UNder the banner of islam: turks, kurds, and the limits of religious unity
(2021, Oxford University Press)
My book, Under the Banner of Islam (Oxford University Press, 2021), focuses on the ambivalent role Islam has played in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict—both as a conflict resolution tool and as a tool of resistance—between the years 2002 and 2015. Using the Kurdish case as an opportunity to explore the intricate relationship between religion, ethnicity, and nationalism, it scrutinizes the role of religion in ethnic conflicts, and asks: Under what conditions does religious identity play a unifying role in religiously homogeneous ethnic conflicts and under what conditions does it fail to do so? How do religious, ethnic, and national identities diverge and converge in such conflicts?
In search for answers to these questions, it employs a theoretical framework that attends to not only micro-level identity formation processes or macro-level doctrinal debates but also meso-level analysis of religious and political actors and how in their hands theological contents might change shape. Drawing on theories of symbolic boundary making and field theory and expanding on the literatures on ethnicity, religion, and conflict, it promotes a much-needed theoretical intervention regarding the formation and conceptualization of religious and ethnic identities in conflict zones.
Empirically, it relies on participant observation in Friday prayers and 62 interviews conducted over the course of a year (between June 2012 and June 2013) in three different cities (Istanbul and the Kurdish-majority Diyarbakir and Batman). Blending interview data with historical institutional analysis Under the Banner of Islam takes the reader on a journey into the inner circles of religious elites from different backgrounds: non-state appointed local Kurdish meles, state-appointed Kurdish and Turkish imams, heads of religious NGOs, members of religious orders, and pious politicians. The resulting narrative is not only a story of religion, ethnicity, and nationalism in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict but also a story of how ethnic and religious identities are negotiated in conflict resolution and how symbolic boundaries are drawn in ethnic conflicts.
Two articles from this research, entitled “Negotiating Symbolic Boundaries in Conflict Resolution: Religion and Ethnicity in Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict”, and “Civil War and Religion: Turkey”, have been published in Qualitative Sociology and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, respectively.
In search for answers to these questions, it employs a theoretical framework that attends to not only micro-level identity formation processes or macro-level doctrinal debates but also meso-level analysis of religious and political actors and how in their hands theological contents might change shape. Drawing on theories of symbolic boundary making and field theory and expanding on the literatures on ethnicity, religion, and conflict, it promotes a much-needed theoretical intervention regarding the formation and conceptualization of religious and ethnic identities in conflict zones.
Empirically, it relies on participant observation in Friday prayers and 62 interviews conducted over the course of a year (between June 2012 and June 2013) in three different cities (Istanbul and the Kurdish-majority Diyarbakir and Batman). Blending interview data with historical institutional analysis Under the Banner of Islam takes the reader on a journey into the inner circles of religious elites from different backgrounds: non-state appointed local Kurdish meles, state-appointed Kurdish and Turkish imams, heads of religious NGOs, members of religious orders, and pious politicians. The resulting narrative is not only a story of religion, ethnicity, and nationalism in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict but also a story of how ethnic and religious identities are negotiated in conflict resolution and how symbolic boundaries are drawn in ethnic conflicts.
Two articles from this research, entitled “Negotiating Symbolic Boundaries in Conflict Resolution: Religion and Ethnicity in Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict”, and “Civil War and Religion: Turkey”, have been published in Qualitative Sociology and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics and Religion, respectively.
A photo taken during the Civil Friday Prayer at Diyarbakir's Dagkapi Square in 2012. Civil Friday Prayers were initiated as acts of civil disobedience by Kurdish clerics who demanded the right to be able to give the Friday sermon in Kurdish.
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A closeup from a Civil Friday Prayer. These prayers were distinguished from regular Friday prayers in that they took place on the street. The sign reads: "He who denies our language cannot teach us our religion."
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book talks
- Universidat Autonoma de Barcelona and University of Groningen, February 27, 2023
- American Sociological Association, Political Sociology section, June 15, 2022
- Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN), 5 May 2022
- Medipol University, Istanbul, 21 December 2021
- Centre for Turkey Studies, 28 June 2021
- University of Oxford, Blavatnik School of Government, 23 June 2021
- University of Graz, Centre for Southeast European Studies, 10 June 2021
- Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, 20 April 2021
- University College London, 16 December 2020