Diyanet as a Turkish Foreign Policy Tool: Evidence from the Netherlands and Bulgaria

Öztürk, Ahmet Erdi; Sözeri, Semiha

doi:10.1017/s175504831700075x

Cited by 79 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(38 reference statements)

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“…In this regard, the establishment of new niches of supporters of the AKP's religious nationalist ideology creates networks that might be mobilised for political or electoral purposes. This aspect contributes to studies on the prominent role of religious actors in the implementation of both AKP foreign policy (Öztürk & Sözeri 2018) and its policies toward the diaspora (Öktem 2014;Mencutek & Baser 2017).…”

Section: Women's Sessions In Mosques: a Matter Of Religious Or Diaspomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, it has resulted from the Diyanet's increasing agency leading to a professionalisation of religious officers whose role and competences have evolved since the early 2000s. Religious officers abroad enjoy a status that might be defined as a sort of 'religious diplomats' (Öztürk & Sözeri 2018): appointed for a maximum of five years 17 , the Diyanet provides them with accommodation and coordinates their activities through the religious attachés employed in Turkish embassies and consulates. Such an international mission is particularly effective in the case of the religious sessions as well as visits and socialising activities organised for women.…”

Section: Women's Sessions In Mosques: a Matter Of Religious Or Diaspomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…According to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA n.d.), about 1,400 religious officers are currently employed outside Turkey. However, despite the flourishing of scholarship addressing Diyanet's wide-ranging international mission, the activities of Turkish religious officers abroad remain understudied with only a few exceptions focusing on the imams (Bruce 2012;Çitak 2010;Öztürk & Sözeri 2018). The work of Zekiye Demir (2010), who conducted a quantitative research on Turkish women's daily life in Germany, is one exception.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Addressing the Blurred Edges of Turkey’s Diaspora and Religious Policy: Diyanet Women Preachers sent to Europe

Maritato¹

2018

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Section: Women's Sessions In Mosques: a Matter Of Religious Or Diaspomentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Women's Sessions In Mosques: a Matter Of Religious Or Diaspomentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Addressing the Blurred Edges of Turkey’s Diaspora and Religious Policy: Diyanet Women Preachers sent to Europe

Maritato¹

2018

ejts

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“…As I addressed above, Turkish-Islamic communities do not impose any conditions regarding familiarity with the language and culture of the host country. Some scholars suggest that this problem stems from the desire of Turkish institutions to maintain their ideological structures in the host country [23,24]. It should be noted that when Islamic educational groups started to organize themselves in the Netherlands in the 1970s, this happened under the same impulse as in Turkey, where the Qur'ān schools undertook pioneering work in formal and informal RE for the Muslim community.…”

Section: Lack Of Language Skills and Knowledge Of The Local Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Major Socio–Political Factors that Impact on the Changing Role, Perception and Image of Imams among Dutch–Turkish Muslims

Gürlesin¹

2019

Education Sciences

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Public debates in the Netherlands assume there is an inherent tension between the traditional task of the imam and his tasks in the secularized Dutch society. Studies of the effect of age and generation on religiosity report that intense religious changes are taking place among second-generation migrants. But the direction of this change is interpreted differently by scholars. A majority of scholars indicate that second-generation migrants consider themselves more 'Muslim' and are more concerned about the traditional sources of religious authority. Other studies report that there is an ongoing pattern of secularization among Muslims in Europe and that second-generation migrants consider themselves less concerned about the traditional and popular sources of religious leadership and authority. In relation to the findings of my PhD study, in this contribution, I elaborate on several factors to shed some light on the possible reasons behind these different findings. These factors are, in turn, the lack of language skills and knowledge of the local culture, the politization of Diyanet's institutional culture, and the secularization of young immigrant identity. While discussing these factors, I evaluated their role in the formation of the public image of imams. The results indicate that the image of the imam in Dutch-Turkish Muslim communities is not uniform. On the one hand, there are the educated interviewees and spiritually oriented respondents, who generally criticize the ignorance of most imams and the irrelevance of their sermons to young Muslims in Europe. On the other hand, there are the less educated respondents and the respondents who strongly experience popular religiosity, who do not question the authority of imams. The image of the imam in the minds of the majority of Dutch-Turkish Muslims is positive and retains its authority.differences into account, this study is concerned with investigating how the image of imams is shaped in the minds of Dutch-Turkish Muslims in relation to spiritual (elite) religiosity and popular religiosity.Public debates in the Netherlands assume there is an inherent tension between the traditional task of the imam and his tasks in the secularized Dutch society. According to some scholars, mosque imams in the 1980s and 1990s had a much larger influence in the diaspora than in their home countries, because of the multiple functions that the mosque fulfilled in the diaspora [6,7]. Imams were in close contact with the public when performing their duties, which positively affected the public image of the imam. Today, however, second-and third-generation migrants tend to understand the language of their country of residence better than the mother tongue of their parents or grandparents, which has implications for the success of these imams in the Netherlands [6].Studies of the effect of age and generation on religiosity report that intense religious changes are taking place among second-generation migrants [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. But the direction of this change is interpreted ...

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“…The extensive and intensively well-researched collection of articles and monographs by Hakan Yavuz-arguably the world's leading scholar on the movement-have provided the basis for a generation of scholars to frame and think about the contours of Gülen's sprawling network. 15 21 and Jeremy Walton. 22 Among the 'outsider literatures', however, comprehensive analyses of the GM's organizational structure and financial operations are few and far between.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Future of the Gülen Movement in Transnational Political Exile: Introduction to the Special Issue

Watmough

Öztürk

2018

Politics, Religion & Ideology

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This article introduces a collection of articles that explore the altered conditions and future trajectory of the Gülen movement (GM) in the wake of the 15 July 2016 attempted coup in Turkey and the subsequent crackdown by the Turkish state. The question of survival has been thrown in to sharp relief by these events, which constitute nothing short of an existential crisis for the movement and have left members stranded in transnational political exile. How have the movement's civil society, education, and business networks fared in transnational space under the new dispensation? Does the severing of the transnational Gülenist diaspora from its Turkish base portend ruin for the GM or are there sources of resilience? What are the likely contours of ongoing conflict between the Turkish state and the GM in transnational space? The article sets these questions in historical context, looking at the causes and consequences of the GM's rise and spectacular fall. It then summarizes the approach and some of the main findings of the articles in the Special Issue, offering an outline of the broader lessons that emerge from them.

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Diyanet as a Turkish Foreign Policy Tool: Evidence from the Netherlands and Bulgaria

Cited by 79 publications

References 36 publications

Addressing the Blurred Edges of Turkey’s Diaspora and Religious Policy: Diyanet Women Preachers sent to Europe

Addressing the Blurred Edges of Turkey’s Diaspora and Religious Policy: Diyanet Women Preachers sent to Europe

Major Socio–Political Factors that Impact on the Changing Role, Perception and Image of Imams among Dutch–Turkish Muslims

The Future of the Gülen Movement in Transnational Political Exile: Introduction to the Special Issue

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