ABSTRACT
This chapter considers different kinds of postsecular sanctuaries in the Turkish context: part-time street sanctuary; a traditional sanctuary Aya Sofya, turned into a museum. It examines Harold W. Turner's phenomenological analysis to extract an elementary grammar of sacred places from it. The chapter considers the relationship between religion understood as a principle of order, as the deep grammar of society and space, particularly urban space. One of the most radical and fruitful ways of considering religion is that of conceiving of it as the deep grammar of society. Space and the sacred are closely linked but, as Durkheim maintains, it is a truism that not everything that is social is sacred and not every space can be considered sacred. Mary Douglas institutional theory, considered as a general frame for a wide range of social phenomena, has decidedly deep Durkheimian roots, insofar as it considers society as a field of strengths organized along a two-dimensional latitude, regulation and integration, and grid/group.
