In September 2017, Ayse Böhürler, a well-known pious intellectual and founding member of the AKP, published a much-noticed opinion piece for the Turkish daily Yeni Safak. With the headline “A youth tired of religion,” Böhürler sought to attract her readership’s attention to what she perceived as the failure of Turkish conservatives to address and respond to the younger generation’s social, psychological, and religious needs. This indifference, in the view of Böhürler, has resulted in a growing sense of estrangement of young people from conservative families from religion. Böhürler’s observations coincide with the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs’ apparent concerns over the dissemination of deist, nihilist, and atheist thought in Turkey. In a recently published special issue of the Directorate’s official monthly magazine, the editors invited various authors to address and explain the imminent threat of unbelief spreading in Turkish society. In the light of the enhanced visibility of religious symbolism and religiosity in the public sphere and the revival of religious references in political rhetoric, concerns over the spread of atheism and unbelief might appear surprising, especially as the phenomenon yet still lacks sufficient academic evidence. Based on a set of biographical interviews conducted with Turkish atheists in autumn 2017, this paper sets out to analyze and compare individual stories of leaving Islam in Turkey. Becoming atheist is a controversial issue, especially when situated in a pious, conservative environment. The process of leaving Islam often takes place secretly, either for the sake of not hurting the feelings of family members and loved ones or the fear of coming into open conflict with one’s direct social environment (family, work, peer group). Public confessions of atheism, as voiced by several interviewees, are usually perceived even worse than ‘coming out of the closet.’ By way of learning more about how individuals came to lose religion and how they experienced the process of becoming atheist in relation to their particular social environment, this paper seeks to reveal another layer in the present discourse on atheism in Turkey.

In March 2016, Gericilige Karsi Aydinlanma Hareketi (“Awakening Movement against Reactionism”), an activist platform protesting against the AKPs self-proclaimed aim to raise a pious generation, released the first issue of their monthly publication with the headline Imam Hatipler Kapatilsin (“Imam Hatip schools must be closed”). The provocatively titled issue was dedicated to the explaining why religious schooling in Turkey needed to be banned. Before long, state prosecutors filed a court case against the platform on the grounds that the headline “intentionally insulted the religious beliefs of the nation” and the publication was only able to run for two more issues. Soon afterwards however, the slogan - ?mam Hatipler Kapatilsin - resurfaced on social media as a hashtag. Here, #imamhatiplerkapatilsin rapidly turned into a viral phenomenon, regularly becoming a top trending (TT) subject on Twitter. Despite the popularity of the hashtag, #imamhatiplerkapatilsin makes no explicit political demands. Rather, one might say that the hashtag is a parody of a political demand. Although this may cause some to dismiss the hashtag as a product of apathetic Internet troll culture, this paper argues that space, rather than the message, is the political aspect of the hashtag. As such, it needs to be imagined as hosting a prefigurative free space - open to expressing values that radically differ from those characterizing mainstream society. In a society characterized by a decline of democratic freedoms and encroaching conservatism, a space for the unrestricted expression of what some would consider as blasphemy needs to be seen as the ultimate political act. It turns the hashtag - a simple convention of online communication - into a beacon for attracting counter-hegemonic challenges. The aesthetics of this cultural challenge itself are drawn from graffiti, Internet memes and Turkish humour culture. Presenting from an archive of more than 5,500 tweets collected during 2017, this paper intends to explore the relationship between #imamhatiplerkapatilsin and broader themes of atheism and unbelief in everyday life. It also seeks to connect the case study to a discussion on the role of humour in Turkish society as a form of resistance and a vehicle for the articulation of counter-hegemonic culture(s).

Ruling AKP was long praised for their mild-Islamism working towards achieving democratic standards on par with the European Union. After the Gezi Protests in 2013 and the alleged coup attempt in 2016, their rule has transformed into a classic case of the Orwellian rule, a competitive authoritarianism wherein a right-wing populist regime is pressing forward with an agenda of chauvinist religious nationalism. The aspirations of the so-called “New Turkey” is characterized by an almost obsessive enthrallment with stopping moral degeneration, reinstatement/affirmation of religious national pride and bringing an end to suffering and humiliation of pious people. These aspirations are conveyed through a discourse of unity, and national/religious purity, authenticity, resoluteness and irredentist dreams of empire. The major cleavages, including the secular-religious divide, the Turkish and Kurdish and the Sunni-Alevi tensions are instrumentalized in such as a discourse. In my paper, I will discuss how Alevis is represented in the official speeches of Erdogan and prominent members of the AKP by a detailed analysis of major newspapers, news sites, official documents, proceedings in the national assembly and press releases since AKP’s rise to power. I will evaluate the representation of Alevi community ranged from fellow Muslim brethren to blasphemy in the aforementioned material. One of the findings is the varying representations of the Alevi community is aligned to the discussion of the improper interpretation of Islam and unbelief in contemporary Turkey. One can attribute the range of metaphors associated with the Alevi community as being an effect of what can tentatively be described as examples of Sunniness. Here, the reference of Sunniness can be imagined as a systematic but mostly unrecognized/ignored/rejected relationship between Sunni religious advantages/privileges and the particular way of seeing and non-seeing coming with being Sunni. The hegemonic discourse of Sunniness seeks to suppress and bring them into line the thoughts, lifestyle and beliefs of Alevis. I will also present how in Erdogan’s and AKP politicians’ discourse Sunni privileges and advantages approved, and how the basic demands of justice, equality, and recognition of Alevis systematically ignored, and “dealt with”. Sunniness maintains and extends its might through the power and the authority of describing what can be thought and lived as righteous religion. There is a special tone relating Alevism with atheist movement in AKP era. In this sense, Erdogan’s and AKP politicians’ speeches might be one of the sources to understand the underpinnings of Sunniness and representations of Alevis.