The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Turkey

Since its foundation in 1923, the Republic of Turkey has had a complex and often misunderstood relationship with religion. The constitutional laïcité implemented by its founders is unique in a Muslim context, and although the majority of the population identifies as Muslim, the state recognizes no official religion. Despite this secular stance, Islam has been resurgent in Turkey in the 21st century. Moreover, the relative openness of Turkish society has cultivated vibrant religious (and non-religious) minority communities, placing it at the forefront of global demographic changes in religion. As a result, Turkey has fostered a perennial dynamism among expressions of religious practice, belief, and identity.

The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Turkey offers a comprehensive analysis of the ways in which religion is understood, experienced, and contested in contemporary Turkey. The Handbook is arranged into thematic sections dealing with religion and the origin of the state, theological trends in the early republic, Islam in rural and urban settings, religious minorities, religion and culture, religion and politics, and modern intellectual and religious trends. Though this is a seemingly narrow topic, the subject of religion in Turkey attracts considerable interest both within and outside of the academy. Paradoxically, the study of modern Turkish theology is still in its infancy in the Western academy, not only because of the inaccessibility of the sources to non-Turkish speakers, but also because of an over-emphasis on the study of Turkish secularism, to the detriment of the study of religion itself. The Handbook thus represents an important intervention by presenting themes from modern Turkish theology, while opening the field of religious and Islamic studies to include more voices from Turkey. With co-editors in chief specializing in religious studies, theology, and anthropology, the Handbook provides the definitive reference work in this growing field.

List of contents

• 1. 100 Years of Religion in Turkey: Voices from the Center and the Margins


• Caroline Tee, Fabio Vicini, and Philip Dorroll


• Part I. Religion Between Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic


• 2. Modern Islam and Reform in the Late Ottoman Empire


• Susan Gunasti


• 3. Beyond the Dichotomy of Secular and Religious: Turkish Secularism, the State, and the Diyanet


• Berna Zengin Arslan


• 4. Religious Minorities and the Construction of Turkish Islam


• Markus Dreßler


• 5. Kurdish Medrese in Ottoman and Republican Times


• Martin van Bruinessen


• 6. A History of the Anatolian Kizilbas-Alevis (c.16th to early 20th century)


• Janina Karolewski and Benjamin Weineck


• Part II. Theological and Intellectual Trends in the 20th Century


• 7. 20th Century Turkish Theology: Remaking and Renewal


• Philip Dorroll


• 8. Sufism in Republican Turkey


• Mark Soileau


• 9. Islamism in Republican Turkey


• Katerina Dalacoura


• 10. The Secular and Religious: Or, What the Curious Lexicon of Turkish Neo-Spiritualism Might Reveal


• Kutlughan Soyubol


• Part III. Religious Life Between Rural and Urban Geographies


• 11. Performing Piety: Religion and Rural Life in Turkey


• Kimberly Hart


• 12. Cemaat and the city: Muslim Reconstruction in Modern Turkey


• Fabio Vicini


• 13. Urban Relations of the Sacred: Building and Storytelling in Republican Turkey


• Timur Hammond


• 14. Twelver Shi'a in Turkey


• Stefan Williamson Fa


• Part IV. Religious Minority Groups: Histories and Experiences


• 15. Armenians in Turkey


• Talin Suciyan


• 16. The Syrian Orthodox Community in Contemporary Turkey and the Diaspora


• Kerith Miller


• 17. Eastern Orthodox Christians and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople


• Anna Maria Beylunioglu


• 18. The Ezidis of Turkey


• Christine Robins


• 19. The Jewish Community in Modern and Contemporary Turkey


• Ozgur Kaymak


• Part V. Religion, Art, and Culture


• 20. Religion and Literature in Ottoman and Republican Turkey, 1850-1960


• Laurent Mignon


• 21. Hagia Sophia and Universal Power from Byzantium to the Modern World


• Bissera V. Pentcheva


• 22. Islam and Music in Turkey


• Harun Korkmaz and Martin Stokes


• 23. Screening Piety: Religion in Turkish Film and Television Drama


• Petra de Bruijn


• Part VI. Islam and Politics


• 24. Fethullah Gülen and the Hizmet Movement: Power, Controversy, and the 'Good Muslim' Paradigm


• Kim Shively and Caroline Tee


• 25. Alevism and the Politics of Religious Freedom


• Jeremy F. Walton and Çiçek Ilengiz


• 26. The Directorate of Religious Affairs: Family-related Religious Guidance Bureaus, and Female Religious Authority in Turkey


• Hikmet Kocamaner


• 27. From Cellhouses to the Parliament: Kurdish Hizbullah's Transformation and the AKP Governance in Turkey


• Mashuq Kurt


• Part VII. Transformations of Modern Turkey


• 28. Locating Women and the Expansion of Islamic Morality in the New Turkey: Anthropological and Sociological Perspectives


• Sertaç Sehlikoglu and Merve Kütük-Kuris


• 29. The LGBTI Community and Religious Context in Turkey


• Cenk Özbay


• 30. Turkey, Islam, and Turks in Europe: Postmigration Transnationalism


• Thijl Sunier


• 31. Contemporary Languages of Science and Islam in Turkey: The Qur'an, Evolution, and Creationism


• Yunus Dogan Telliel


• Part VIII. Contemporary Religious and Intellectual Trends


• 32. Islamic Feminism in Turkey


• Feyza Burak-Adli


• 33. Public Islamic Intellectuals in Turkey


• Gokhan Bacik


• 34. Turkey's Religious Nones: Atheists, Deists, or Post-Muslims?


• Pierre Hecker


• 35. 21st Century Turkish Theology: Currents of Continuity and Contestation


• Taraneh R. Wilkinson


• Index

About the author

Caroline Tee is Professor of the Anthropology of Islam at the University of Chester, UK. Her research focuses on contemporary religion in Turkey, and she has carried out extensive ethnographic fieldwork amongst the Alevis and the community associated with Fethullah Gülen. She is author of The Gülen Movement in Turkey: The Politics of Islam and Modernity (London: IB Tauris, 2016) and her work has also been published in journals including British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Sociology of Islam, European Journal of Turkish Studies, Politics, Religion and Ideology, and Journal of Contemporary Religion. Professor Tee is editor of the Edinburgh Studies in the Anthropology of Islam series at Edinburgh University Press and, between 2024-27, she is Principal Investigator for "Muslims, the Secular, and Existential Risk", funded by Templeton Religion Trust.

Fabio Vicini is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Verona, Italy, and founder and convener of the Muslim Worlds Network of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). He is the author of Reading Islam: Life and Politics of Brotherhood in Modern Turkey (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2020). Located at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary inquiry in Anthropology, Islamic studies, and Social Theory, his research has investigated how, in the last one hundred years, Muslims in Turkey have been rethinking the Islamic tradition through the conceptual apparatus of modernity while continuing to rely on longstanding Islamic ideas of the self, discipline, connectivity, and transcendence. His work has been published, among other venues, in HAU - Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Culture and Religion, Anthropology & Education Quarterly, Ethnicities, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.

Philip Dorroll is Associate Professor of Religion at Wofford College, USA, and author of Islamic Theology in the Turkish Republic (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021). He received his Ph.D. in Religion from Emory University. His published research has focused on the history of modern Islamic theology in Turkish, classical Islamic theology in Arabic, and Eastern Christian theology in classical Arabic. His work been published in venues such as Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Journal of Islamic Studies, Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies, Studies in World Christianity, Contemporary Islam, Review of Middle East Studies, and Religion Compass. His research on Islamic theology has been translated into Albanian, Bosnian, and Turkish. He is also current co-chair of the Eastern Orthodox Studies Unit at the American Academy of Religion.

Product details

• Assisted by: Philip Dorroll (Editor), Tee Caroline (Editor), Fabio Vicini (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 29.05.2026
• EAN: 9780197624883
• ISBN: 978-0-19-762488-3
• Series: Oxford Handbooks
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > Other religions; Islam, RELIGION / Islam / Rituals & Practice, RELIGION / Religion, Politics & State, RELIGION / Sexuality & Gender Studies, Religion & beliefs, Religion & politics, Religion and Politics, Religious aspects of sexuality, gender and relationships, Religious aspects of sexuality, gender & relationships