ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of religious movements in Turkey, namely the (Sunni) Islamist and the Alevi movement. The rise of religious movements since the 1970s has been widely conceptualised as reflecting a reaction or grassroots mobilisation against the crisis and authoritarianism of the modern secular state and colonialism. Scholarship on Turkey has mirrored these perspectives in viewing religious movements, particularly the emergence of Islamism, as the mobilisation of a ‘Muslim society’ in reaction to the authoritarian secularist and Kemalist Turkish state. In contrast, this chapter outlines first how the salience of religious politics was facilitated by the form of nation-state building and the Islamist movement was enabled from within the state including by the state institution and chief Islamic authority, the Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı). The second section traces the intellectual roots, main currents, factions and groups within the Islamist movement, and their evolving and contrasting strategies over time, as they have engaged with the nation-state framework and neoliberal economics. The third section explains Islamist political party mobilisation, while the fourth section probes the record of the governing Islamist Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) since taking power in 2002, discussing the impact on the wider Islamist movement and its prospects. The final section provides an overview of the Alevi movement.
