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.

This book examines how Turkey’s ruling party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan produces and employs necropolitical narratives in order to perpetuate its authoritarian rule. In doing so, the book argues that as the party transitioned from socially conservative Muslim democratic values to authoritarian Islamism, it embraced a necropolitical narrative based on the promotion of martyrdom, and of killing and dying for the Turkish nation and Islam, as part of their authoritarian legitimation. This narrative, the book shows, is used by the party to legitimise its actions and deflect its failures through the framing of the deaths of Turkish soldiers and civilians, which have occurred due to the AKP’s political errors, as martyrdom events in which loyal servants of the Turkish Republic and God gave their lives in order to protect the nation in a time of great crisis. This book also describes how, throughout its second decade in power, the AKP has used Turkey’s education system, its Directorate of Religious Affairs, and television programs in order to propagate its necropolitical martyrdom narrative.

This book explores how digital authoritarianism operates in India, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and how religion can be used to legitimize digital authoritarianism within democracies. In doing so, it explains how digital authoritarianism operates at various technological levels including sub-network level, proxy level, and user level, and elaborates on how governments seek to control cyberspace and social media. In each of these states, governments, in an effort to prolong – or even make permanent – their rule, seek to eliminate freedom of expression on the internet, punish dissidents, and spread pro-state propaganda. At the same time, they instrumentalize religion to justify and legitimize digital authoritarianism. Governments in these five countries, to varying degrees and at times using different methods, censor the internet, but also use digital technology to generate public support for their policies, key political figures, and at times their worldview or ideology. They also, and again to varying degrees, use digital technology to demonize religious and ethnic minorities, opposition parties, and political dissidents. An understanding of these aspects would help scholars and the public understand both the technical and social aspects of digital authoritarianism in these five countries.

This book investigates Turkey’s departure from a ‘flawed democracy’ under Kemalist secularism, and its transitioning into Islamist authoritarian Erdoğanism, through the lenses of informal law, legal pluralism, and legal hybridity. In doing so, it examines the attempts of Turkey’s ruling party (AKP) at social engineering and gradual Islamisation of the Turkish state and society, by using informal Islamist laws. To that end, the book argues that the AKP has paved the way for Islamist legal hybridity where society, state, and law, are being gradually Islamised on an ad hoc basis. Informal law and legal pluralism in Turkey have had a non-state characteristic which have permitted Muslims to solve disputes by seeking the opinions of religio-legal scholars. Yet under the AKP rule, this informal legal system has become increasingly dominated by conservatives, sometimes radical Islamists, which the governing party has taken advantage of by either formalizing some parts of the informal Islamist law, or using it informally to mobilize its supporters against the opposition.

This volume, with contributions from well-respected experts on Turkey, examines how well different theories and frameworks in international relations explain various aspects of contemporary Turkish foreign policy (TFP). Exploring the value of both structural (neorealist) and ideational (constructivist) approaches, the book’s theory-informed case studies on the features of TFP including Neo-Ottomanism; the role of religion; and Turkey’s relations with the European Union, the Middle East, Russia, and the United States, provide an analytical perspective on developments that have captured the attention of both academics and policymakers. More importantly, this collection examines the shift in Turkey’s foreign policy stance from Western and secular (non-sectarian) to Islamist, Turkist, Neo-Ottomanist and Eurasianist orientations. With Turkey assuming importance across a number of regions and issues, this book will be a great resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of Middle East Studies, and Politics and International Relations. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Turkish Studies.

This book focuses on securitization and authoritarianism in Turkey with research on the country’s Islamist populist ruling party’s (AKP) oppression of different socio-political, ethnic and religious groups. In doing so, it analyzes how the AKP has securitized to oppress different socio-political groups and identities, according to the time and need for the party's political survival. Research in the book sheds light on the use of traumas, conspiracy theories, and fear as tools in the securitization and repression processes.

This book features reflections by scholars and practitioners from diverse religious traditions. It posits that the global challenges facing humanity today can only be mastered if humans from diverse faith traditions can meaningfully collaborate in support of human rights, reconciliation, sustainability, justice, and peace. Seeking to redress common distortions of religious mis- and dis-information, the book aims to construct interreligious common ground ‘beyond the divide’. Organised into three main sections, the book features sixteen conceptual, empirical, and practice-informed chapters that explore spirituality across faiths and cultures. Chapter 1 delineates the state of the art in relation to interfaith engagement, Chapters 2–8 advance theoretical research, Chapters 9–12 discuss empirical perspectives, and Chapters 13–16 showcase field projects and recount stories and lived experiences. Comprising works by scholars, professionals, and practitioners from around the globe, Interfaith Engagement Beyond the Divide: Approaches, Experiences, and Practices is an interdisciplinary publication on interreligious thought and engagement: Assembles a curated collection of chapters from numerous countries and diverse religious traditions; Addresses interfaith scholarship and praxis from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives; Comprises interfaith dialogue and collaborative research involving authors of different faiths; Envisions prospects for peace, interreligious harmony in diversity, and a world that may be equitably and enduringly shared. The appraisal of present and future challenges and opportunities, framed within a context of public policy and praxis, makes this interdisciplinary publication a useful tool for teaching, research, and policy development. Chapter 16 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

This books explores the rise of civilizational populism throughout the world, and its consequences. Civilizational populism posits that democracy ought to be based upon enacting the ‘people’s will’, yet it adds a new and troubling dimension to populism’s thin ideology: a civilization based classification of peoples and division of society. Today, we increasingly find not conflict between civilizations, but conflict within states over their civilizational identity. From Western Europe to Turkey, and from India and Pakistan to Indonesia, populists are increasingly employing a civilization based classification of peoples in order to define the identities of ‘the people’ and their perceived enemies. This book is the first to examine civilizational populism as global phenomenon rather than a uniquely Western form of politics. Through a series of case studies, the book examines the role played by religion in forming civilizational identities, but also investigates the often deleterious consequences of civilizational populism entering the political mainstream.

This edited book examines the growing worldwide phenomenon of civilizational populism in democratic nation-states and brings together research that explores this in a wide variety of religious, political, and geographic contexts. In doing so, the book shows how, from Europe to India and Pakistan, and from Indonesia to the Americas, populists increasingly define national belonging through civilizational identity, claiming that the world can be divided into several religion-defined civilizations with incompatible values. The volume also discusses the complex relationship between civilizational populism, democracy and nationalism and shows how nationalists often use civilizational identity to help define ingroups and outgroups within their society. With this, the book investigates the salience of the concept, its widespread and influential nature, and also explains how populists construct civilizational identities, and the factors behind the rise of civilizational populism.