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Religious Practice at the Workplace: Reconciliation, Negotiation and Conflict in AKP’s Turkey
Abstract
In the industrial zone of Çorum, workers change their work overalls at the specially designated time for Friday lunch break and get on the bus provided by the employer to go collectively to the Organized Industrial Zone mosque to perform the Friday prayer. It is voiced by many interlocutors in their mid-50s and 60s that in their youth, some 30-40 years ago, in what is today referred as the 'old Turkey,' where religious life was relatively confined to the private sphere and its display in the public sphere was frowned upon, the collective performance of Friday prayer in the work context was quite unlikely and uncommon. However, especially in the last twenty years under the ruling Justice and Development party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), the expansion of the religious sphere, the increasing legitimacy of religious thought and behavior, and the visibility and funding of both state and non-state religious institutions has played a significant role in the social, political, and economic transformation of the country. In this talk, against the backdrop of debates on the religionization and secularization in Turkey, I will discuss which religious practices are performed in workplaces, what kind of regulations and negotiations are involved, and within what limits they are applied. Drawing on 12-month ethnographic field research conducted in the industry of Çorum/Turkey between 2015 and 2016, including two workplace ethnographies and 93 in-depth interviews, I will demonstrate how the employers’ time-discipline based on the motivation for profit reconciles with the religious time in work environments involving Alevis, Sunnis, religious, and non-religious individuals, or how it does not reconcile, and what conflicts or silences it creates in daily work life. These conflicts and silences show that expansion of Islamic field in daily life in Turkey is not perceived as monolithic and harmonious as it may initially appear when one looks at the crowds going to Friday prayers. I argue that there are varying degrees and claims of religiosity and its practice, particularly of Sunni Islam, among religious individuals and also AKP voters.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
None