Beyond Muslim identity: Opinion-based groups in the Gezi Park protest

Abstract

Media depicted Turkish Gezi Park protests as a clash between secularists and Islamists within a majority-Muslim country. Extending a social identity approach to protests, this study aims (a) to distinguish the protest participants in terms of their opinion-based group memberships, (b) to investigate how their religious identification and their group membership were associated with democratic attitudes. Six hundred and fifty highly educated urban young adult participants were surveyed during the protest. Latent class analysis of participants’ political concerns and online and offline actions yielded four distinct opinion-based groups labeled “liberals,” “secularists,” “moderates,” and “conservatives.” Looking at the intersection of the participants’ group identities with their Muslim identification, we observed that the higher conservatives’ and moderates’ religious identification, the less they endorsed democratic attitudes, whereas religious identification made little or no difference in liberals’ and secularists’ democratic attitudes. Our findings of distinct groups among protest participants in a majority-Muslim country challenge an essentialist understanding of religion as a homogeneous social identity.

What Determines Voting Behaviors of Muslim Minorities in Europe: Muslim Identity or Left‐Right Ideology?

“…While "private" Muslims are strongly attached to their Muslim identity with low religious practice, strict and selective Muslims have strong religious attachments, and strong or moderate religious practices, respectively. We tentatively expect to find "strict" and "moderate/secular" types in the current study, in line with the conservative versus secular divide among Turkish-Muslims in Turkey (Baysu & Phalet, 2017). Moreover, the present study only includes measures of religious practice, making it unlikely to find a "private" Muslim with high attachment and no religious practice (Phalet et al, 2012).…”

“…For instance, in the United States, the liberal-conservative ideological dimension seems to be more salient, and in turn, it predicts voting (Jacoby, 2010). From the perspective of cleavage theory (Lipset & Rokkan, 1967), religion is a salient social-political cleavage among voters in Turkey (Baysu & Phalet, 2017;Çarkoğlu, 2007;Kalaycıoglu, 1994). Secularist versus religious/pro-Islamist cleavage overlaps with Mardin's (1973) traditional center (the secularist) versus periphery (the religious) distinction in the formation of Turkish politics (Çarkoğlu, 2007;Kalaycıoglu, 1994).…”

“…Most research on intersectionality refers to intersections of race and gender. We know of one study (Baysu & Phalet, 2017) that looked at the intersectionality of Muslim identification and political identities (such as secular, liberal, conservative) among the Gezi Park protest participants in Turkey. Accordingly, political identities qualified the meaning and consequences of Muslim identification for democratic attitudes: While for liberals and secularists, Muslim identification was unrelated to democratic attitudes, for conservatives, it was related to weaker democratic attitudes.…”

Palestinian Solidarity Action: The Dynamics of Politicized and Religious Identity Patterns Among Student Activists

“…According to the specific mediating effect tests, we found that group efficacy was a significant mediator of the relationship between religious identity and collective action intention (i.e., support for Hypothesis 2b). Our findings contribute to the explanation that religious identity predicts the desire to engage in collective action (Baysu & Phalet, 2017). We suspect that the source of group efficacy pertaining to the Palestinian issue is largely attributable to religious identity, which helps explain the reason Muslim religious identity -through the mediating effect of group efficacy -has a stronger effect on collective action intention.…”

“…Religious identity is also manifested as either normative (peaceful) or nonnormative (violent) collective action depending on the purpose of the action, its positive acceptance, and threats to identity (Phalet, Baysu, & Verkuyten, 2010). Another study dmeonstrated that although the identification of Muslims did not play a role in supporting democracy during the Gezi Turkey protest in 2013, identification as a Muslim did indicate a slightly different pattern in adopted political attitudes (i.e., secular, liberal, conservative, or moderate) (Baysu & Phalet, 2017).…”