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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?
List of contents
- 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
About the author
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.
Summary
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.
Additional text
The book's literary flair, which adds an engaging dimension to its content, cannot be ignored. The ability to present its remarkable academic depth in a fluent and compelling manner is the other striking feature of the book.
