During a faculty research seminar at the School of Public Policy (SPP) on November 7th, Visiting Research Fellow Brett Wilson made a number of salient observations on religion and nationalism in Turkey. Wilson, who is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Macalester College, has been conducting research on modernization and religious transformation in the Muslim world with a focus on Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean for many years. He is the author of the forthcoming book, Translating the Qur’an in an Age of Nationalism: Print Culture and Modern Islam in Turkey.
Wilson asserted that to understand Turkey today, one must look at what took place in the late Ottoman period and early twentieth century. He described how as the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, the Qur’an had been used to create a national identity. “The mention of a ‘Turkish Qur’an’ was a radical idea at the time,” said Wilson, “and was part of a nationalization of all aspects of Islamic ritual.”
When the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed in October 1923, its first president Mustafa Kemal Ataturk moved forcefully to make Turkey a secular state: Islamic schools and courts were closed, the Hat Law was passed, and Sufi lodges were prohibited. In 1928, the Constitution was amended to remove the provision declaring Islam the official religion of Turkey. Wilson explained that although the secularization of Turkey was popular among certain elite segments of the Turkish population, it was also widely opposed. “If you listen to Erdogan and his supporters today,” said Wilson, “you hear how deeply resentful they still are of the changes that took place in the first 30 years [after Turkish independence in 1923].”
The role of religion in Turkey today is one of the topics that Wilson will address in “Religion in the Public Sphere,” the course he is co-teaching with CEU Associate Professor Matthias Riedl at SPP this winter.