ABSTRACT
This chapter presents case studies of Sufi organizations as they developed over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The goal is not to give a thorough catalogue of Sufi organizations in Turkey but rather to look at certain communities as exemplars of strategies of adaptation and accommodation to the Republican political realities—strategies that allowed many of these communities to survive and thrive. One of the most distinctive and influential religious thinkers in modern Turkey is the great theologian Said Nursi, known as Bediüzzaman (“wonder of the age”). Some strains of Sufism are “other-worldly,” treating the material world as a potential snare that diverts the believers’ attention away from God. The commodification of such an essential Sufi ritual makes clear the full “domestication” of the Mevlevis. The Mevlevis have remained strictly non-political, and they have become a source of national pride as their ritual displays advertise Turkey’s beautiful, tolerant cultural heritage.
