Under the Banner of Islam

Turks, Kurds, and the Limits of Religious Unity

Gülay Türkmen

Religion and Global Politics

Examines how ethnic and religious identities are negotiated in conflict resolution
Discusses the role of religion as a conflict resolution tool
Based on participant observation in Civil Friday Prayers and 62 interviews

Under the Banner of Islam

Turks, Kurds, and the Limits of Religious Unity

Gülay Türkmen

Description

Sunni Islam has played an ambivalent role in Turkey's Kurdish conflict--both as a conflict resolution tool and as a tool of resistance. Under the Banner of Islam uses Turkey as a case study to understand how religious, ethnic, and national identities converge in ethnic conflicts between co-religionists. Gülay Türkmen asks a question that informs the way we understand religiously homogeneous ethnic conflicts today: Is it possible for religion to act as a resolution tool in these often-violent conflicts?

In search for answers to this question, in Under the Banner of Islam, Türkmen journeys into the inner circles of religious elites from different backgrounds: non-state-appointed local Kurdish meles, state-appointed Kurdish and Turkish imams, heads of religious NGOs, and members of religious orders. Blending interview data with a detailed historical analysis that goes back as far as the nineteenth century, she argues that the strength of Turkish and Kurdish nationalisms, the symbiotic relationship between Turkey's religious and political fields, the religious elites' varying conceptualizations of religious and ethnic identities, and the recent political developments in the region (particularly in Syria) all contribute to the complex role religion plays in the Kurdish conflict in Turkey.

Under the Banner of Islam is a specific story of religion, ethnicity, and nationalism in Turkey's Kurdish conflict, but it also tracks a broader narrative of how ethnic and religious identities are negotiated when resolving conflicts.

Under the Banner of Islam

Turks, Kurds, and the Limits of Religious Unity

Gülay Türkmen

Religion and Global Politics

Prologue
Introduction
"Under the banner of Islam"
"The ambivalence of the sacred": Religion and conflict resolution
The porous borders of religion and ethnicity
The shifting borders of religious and political fields
Chapter 1
"Green Kemalism": The evolving role of Islam in the Kurdish conflict
Kurdish revolts in the late Ottoman period: Against centralization?
Kurdish revolts in the early Republican period: Kurdish-Islamic Synthesis?
The secularization of the Kurdish movement: 1950-1978
Bringing Islam back in: 1990-2002
Chapter 2
"Islam as cement": The way out?
"There is only one nation and that is the nation of Abraham"
The ummah that never was
AKP's Kurdish policy: Neo-Ottoman Pan-Islamism
Chapter 3
Muslim-Kurds: The case for religio-ethnic identity
"God could have created us all the same": Religious roots of ethnicity
Kurdish Islam embodied: Civil Friday Prayers
Turkey's religious field in the 2000s: A Bourdieusian analysis
Islam as a tool of resistance
Chapter 4
"Only Turks can lead a Muslim union": The case for ethno-religious identity
Ottomanism, Islamism, Turkism: Birth pangs of Turkish nationalism
Turkish History Thesis and the Turkification of Islam
Turkey's pending dilemma: The Turkish-Islamic Synthesis
AKP's transformation: "From the Kurd's Qur'an to the Turk's flag"
Conclusion:
United in religion, divided by ethnicity?
The way forward: Whither Kurdish conflict?
Appendix: Methodology
Notes
Index

Under the Banner of Islam

Turks, Kurds, and the Limits of Religious Unity

Gülay Türkmen

Religion and Global Politics

Author Information

Gülay Türkmen is a sociologist and current postdoctoral fellow at the University of Goettingen. Her work examines how macro-scale historical and political developments inform questions of belonging and identity-formation in multi-cultural societies. She has published in several academic outlets including the Annual Review of Sociology, Qualitative Sociology, Sociological Quarterly, and Nations and Nationalism. She has written about developments in Turkish politics for Open Democracy and Jadaliyya.

Under the Banner of Islam

Turks, Kurds, and the Limits of Religious Unity

Gülay Türkmen

Religion and Global Politics

Reviews and Awards

"This is a good, concise account of the dilemma Turks and Kurds face in Turkey. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty." -- R. W. Olson, University of Kentucky, CHOICE

"This is an excellent, exhaustive study of the main social problem of religious nationalism in contemporary Turkey. Türkmen beautifully reveals that the way the current Turkish government privileges religion alone in determining nationalÂbelonging will not work in the long term, because of the way it silences ethnicity in general and the sizeable Kurdish population in Turkey in particular. A must-read for all interested in religion, ethnicity, nationalism, and globalization." -- Fatma Müge Göçek, Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies, University of Michigan

"Religious unity is often presented as a panacea for violent ethnic conflict among Muslim groups. In this well-researched, conceptually innovative, and theoretically engaging book, Türkmen shows how a suprareligious approach fails to take deep sociological root and to offer a resolution to the Kurdish question in Turkey. Her in-depth interviews with both Kurdish and Turkish religious elites reveal how religious beliefs actually serve as the cement of distinct ethnic identities rather than superseding them. Her book is an important contribution to Kurdish studies and politics of religion and ethnicity literature." -- Güneş Murat Tezcür, Jalal Talabani Chair of Kurdish Political Studies, University of Central Florida

"Through her analysis of the discourse of Kurdish and Turkish religious personalities on Islam, ethnicity, and nationalism, Gülay Türkmen sheds significant new light on hitherto neglected but important aspects of the Kurdish conflict and the Islamic revival in Turkey." -- Martin van Bruinessen, Professor of the Comparative Study of Contemporary Muslim Societies, Utrecht University