There is a growing literature on the evolving relationship between neoliberal projects and religions worldwide (Tugal 2009; Bugra and Savaskan 2014; Dawson 2016). Building on this body of work, a closer look to the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi, AKP) governments in Turkey can be fruitful for understanding how centralized religion, authoritarianism, and economic logic of neoliberalism could co-operate. Since AKP entered politics, it tried to harness neoliberalism and Islam. Particularly after its third term in office, AKP’s brand of Islamism became increasingly authoritarian, where centralized religion has turned into a means of controlling and organizing the society and shape identity categories toward an economic logic. This paper’s aim is two-fold, first we delineate the socio-economic apparatus that AKP has constructed, with the assistance of centralized religion delivered by the Directorate of Religious Affairs, and its particular gender-, family-, and community-focused tenets. In order to discuss these, we use the data from Korkut and Eslen-Ziya led ‘Gender construction in Turkish Mosque sermons’ project, collected in 10 Turkish counties with a study of 400 sermons between 2011-2013. In this effort, following Foucauldian framework of ‘conduct of conduct’, we present how centralized religion shapes, guides or affects the conduct of some groups under state guidance (Gordon 1991, 2). Second, we focus on the societal resistance to neoliberal governmentality – a theoretically underdeveloped topic. Recent academic literature on the AKP explains the stability of its power with the insecurity that it caters to (Carkoglu and Yildirim 2015) and the coalition of the pious that AKP claims to represent (David 2016). Looking at the Labor and Justice Platform (Emek ve Adalet Platformu), a youth-based Islamic formation that emphasizes an egalitarian and pluralist Islamic politics, and Reçel blog, an Islamic feminist online site, we argue that ‘conduct of conduct’ can face opposition from the very groups that it associates with its power apparatus. These organizations challenge the hegemony of the ruling AKP’s neoliberal, conservative authoritarianism and propose alternative conceptions of morality, citizenship, gender, and economic relations from an Islamic perspective. We will present data from activist interviews and textual analysis of policy papers, declarations and blog entries. Our discussion goes beyond studies on Islamism in Turkey that largely focus on AKP and reveals that the Islamic public sphere in Turkey is multivocal and Islamic politics cannot be reduced to the dominant religious actors.

Over 2.7 million Syrians have entered Turkey since 2011 through an open-door policy, making Turkey the country with the largest Syrian refugee population worldwide. This paper investigates the role of religion and religiosity by focusing on the role of Diyanet (The Directorate of Religious Affairs) in the formation of a positive public opinion toward the refugees and facilitation of their integration to the society in Turkey since 2011. Several studies have examined the Syrian refugee issue in Turkey in recent years; however, the literature does not address the role of religious discourse in the case of Diyanet. I argue that religion and religiosity have played the key role in the integration of Syrian refugees into the Turkish society. Diyanet is an official state institution that carries out religious affairs pertaining to faith, worship and moral principles in Turkey. The role played by Diyanet in the case of Syrian refugees has multiple dimensions. For example, Diyanet used religious discourse to motivate Turkish Muslims to help the refugees by using the extensive network of mosques across Turkey, all of which operated by Diyanet. Additionally, Diyanet contributes to the education of the Syrian refugees in Turkey by providing scholarships, workshops and summer schools besides providing humanitarian aid. In this paper, I investigate the role of Diyanet in shaping public opinion toward Syrian refugees and their integration in Turkey by reviewing Diyanet’s reports, conducting interviews with Diyanet officials, and analyzing data from various public surveys on Syrian refugees. I will also analyze interviews and reports that appeared in the Turkish media outlets. When we consider the fact that forced and voluntary migration due to political and economic instability has become a major issue around the world, this study is relevant for our understanding of the refugee crisis in other countries as well.

Turkish democrats, scholarly community, and even Western policy circles once had high hopes from the alleged moderation and democratization of Islamist social actors in Turkey. The current democratic breakdown in Turkey, occurring mostly with the collaboration of Islamic social actors, posits a huge puzzle in this sense. What did go wrong? In this paper, I focus on the Islamic trade union of Turkey, which was one of the first Islamic civil society actors to embrace liberal democratic discourse during 1990s. Having more than 400,000 members, HAK-IS is the representative of Islamic social movement within the organized labour of Turkey. During 1990s, HAK-IS was a vivid supporter of democratic values in Turkey; in fact, it was even more enthusiastic than leftist and centrist trade unions in its support for membership of Turkey to European Union. Thus, scholars saw HAK-IS as the leader of transformation of Islamists into democratic civil society organizations. During the rule of the Justice and Development Party, however, HAK-IS has turned into a loyal supporter of JDP. It constantly supported all political positions of JDP, even when these positions were clearly undemocratic. Were scholars wrong in their praise of HAK-IS as a democratic organization? Or, did HAK-IS lose that capacity in time? Solving this puzzle of HAK-IS, I believe, can help us understanding the Islamic social movement’s democratic journey in Turkey. This paper relies on interviews with old and current HAK-IS managers and an analysis of all magazines published by HAK-IS from 1986 to 2013. Relying on the original data, I argue that “democratic transformation” of HAK-IS in 1990s was only limited to strategic cooperation with several liberal trade unionists coming from a leftist past. The bureaucratic structure of HAK-IS, however, stayed the same. While HAK-IS managers with an Islamist past benefited from the human capital of liberal trade unionists, rewarding them with high-level posts in the trade union, they actually never allowed these liberal-minded trade unionists to grasp real power in the union. Once liberals of Turkey experienced an ideological and political break with the JDP government around 2013, liberal-minded trade unionists of HAK-IS were removed from HAK-IS as well. Thus, I argue, the case of HAK-IS teaches us a crucial lesson. The survival of bureaucratic structures within organizations prevents a true democratic transformation process. Scholars must be careful to distinguish strategic rhetorical moves of institutions from real organizational transformations.

The paper, “Post-Factual Politics and the Illiberal Turn: The Case of Turkey” examines the governance implications of post-factual politicking via the case of Turkey. The paper seeks to contribute to the nascent literature on political “practice” and performance in the Middle Eastern theater. It draws, especially, on Lisa Wedeen’s seminal work on the “politics of ‘as if” in Syria, where the regime fosters epistemological uncertainty about political developments in order to bolster its own repressive rule. This paper, in turn, develops an original framework with which to assess how regimes leverage old and new media towards framing political developments in their favor. The framework is vetted using extensive primary and secondary sources to map Ankara’s messaging strategy since 2013. Tracing tactics over the course of three critical elections, an abortive coup and its fallout, and a constitutional referendum scheduled for April 2017 which may culminate in abandonment of Turkey’s centuries-old, if fragile, democratic tradition, the paper seeks to contribute to our understanding of how political communication in our post-factual, new media age may impel towards authoritarian politics. Bibliography: Wedeen, Lisa. Ambiguities of domination: Politics, rhetoric, and symbols in contemporary Syria. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Wedeen, Lisa. Peripheral visions: publics, power, and performance in Yemen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.