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ABSTRACT
The article builds on current academic debates pertaining to the use of religion in global politics. By examining how and why religion is used as a tool for foreign policy aims as well as for perpetuating a state’s identity and institutional capacity at home and abroad; the article presents a theory-informed discussion on Turkey’s transnational politics of religion from a comparative perspective. The country’s use of religion as a political tool outside of its borders has been studied in Western Europe, Africa, Asia and the Balkans thanks to extensive fieldwork and interviews conducted between 2016 and 2020. The article investigates how and why Turkey has implemented similar policies with different aims in different geographic territories and the underlying material and normative motivations for this pursuit. The main argument presented in the article is that Turkey, under the rule of the AKP (Justice and Development Party), employs religion for three fundamental reasons: to bolster its regional and global influence, to access regions or groups that are difficult to reach through traditional foreign policy tools and to alter domestic political balances or amass power.
Acknowledgement
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programe under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 891305.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Warner and Walker, ‘Thinking about the role’; Sandal and Fox, Religion in international relations theory; and Haynes, Religion in Global Politics.
2 Mandaville, Islam and Politics; Cesari, What is Political Islam; and Marshall, ‘Roman Catholic Approaches’
3 Bettiza, Finding Faith in Foreign Policy; Henne, ‘Government interference in religious institutions’; James and Ozdamar, ‘"Religion as a factor in ethnic conflict’
4 Ozturk, ‘Turkey’s Diyanet under AKP rule’.
5 Haynes, Religion and International Relations, 5, and Sandal and James, ‘Religion and international relations theory,’ 9.
6 Interview with high-ranking French Interior Ministry staffer in May 2018.
7 Ozkan, ‘Turkey’s Religious and Socio-Political Depth’.
8 Korkut, ‘The Diyanet’.
9 Ozturk and Gozaydin, ‘A Frame’
10 A majority of the interviews were conducted by the first author. Both authors contributed to the theoretical framework and conceptual analysis of the data gathered as a result of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork.
11 Philpott, ‘The rise and fall’.
12 Micklethwait and Wooldridge, God is Back.
13 Fox, ‘Religion as an overlooked element,’ 53.
14 Fox and Sandler Bringing Religion, 168.
15 Yavuz, and Öztürk. ‘Turkish secularism and Islam under the reign of Erdoğan’.
16 Brown and James, ‘The religious characteristics of states,’ 1345.
17 Henne, ‘The two swords’.
18 Kubálková, ‘Towards an international political theology’.
19 Sandal and Fox, Religion in International Relations Theory, 176.
20 Sandal, ‘Religious actors’.
21 Gurses, ‘Is Islam a cure?’.
22 Kuru, Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment.
23 Nye, ‘Soft power.’
24 Haynes, Religious Transnational Actors.
25 Ciftci and Tezcur, ‘Soft power’.
26 Mandaville and Hamid, ‘Islam as statecraft’.
27 Bettiza, ‘States, Religions and Power’.
28 Cumhurbaskani Erdogan; ‘Biz Islam’a Gore Hareket Edecegiz Islam Bize Gore Degil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v80YpZ-I1cI
29 Ozturk and Sozeri, ‘Diyanet as a Turkish Foreign Policy Tool’.
30 Öztürk, ‘Transformation of the Turkish Diynaet’.
31 Citak, ‘National conceptions’.
32 Öztürk, ‘Religion, Identity and Power’.
33 Watmought and Ozturk, ‘The future’.
34 Candar, Turkey’s Neo-Ottomanist Moment.
35 Yilmaz and Albayrak, Populist and Pro-Violence.
36 Bechev, ‘Turkey in the Balkans’.
37 Citak, ‘The institutionalization’.
38 Tas, ‘A history’.
39 Yabanci, ‘Home State Oriented Diaspora Organizations,’ and Baser and Ozturk, ‘Positive and negative’.
40 Baser and Feron, ‘Host state reactions’.
41 Yavuz, Nostalgia for the Empire.
42 Ozkan, ‘Turkey’s Religious’.
43 ‘Erdogan Kirgizistan’da Cami Acilisi Yapti,’ Haberler.com, September 2, 2018, accessed April 12 2022 at, https://www.haberler.com/guncel/erdogan-kirgizistan-da-cami-acilisi-yapti-11196649-haberi/
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ahmet Erdi Öztürk
Ahmet Erdi Öztürk is an Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at London Metropolitan University. He is also a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at Coventry University and GIGA in Hamburg Germany. He the author of Religion, Identity and Power: Turkey and the Balkans in the Twenty-First Century (Edinburgh University Press, 2021) and co-editor of Authoritarian Politics in Turkey (IB Tauris 2017), Ruin or Resilience? The Future of the Gulen Movement in Transnational Political Exile (Routledge 2018) and Islam, Populism and Regime Change in Turkey (Routledge 2019), as well as more than 25 peer-review journal articles. He is the winner of London Metropolitan University’s Emerging Outstanding Early Career Researcher Award (2020) and Distinguished Emerging Scholar Award of International Studies Association (2022).
Bahar Baser
Bahar Baser is an Associate Professor of Politics at Durham University. She is also an Associate Research Fellow at the Security Institute for Governance and Leadership in Africa (SIGLA), Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Her research interests include ethno-national conflicts and political violence, conflict resolution, third party mediation, migration and diaspora studies. She is the author of numerous journal articles and Diasporas and Homeland Conflicts: A Comparative Perspective (Routledge 2015). She is co-editor of two works, Authoritarian Politics in Turkey (IB Tauris 2017) and Migration from Turkey to Sweden: Integration, Belonging and Transnational Community (IB Tauris 2017). She has also written policy reports for the Berghof Peace Foundation, TUSIAD Foreign Policy Forum and the Heinrich Boll Foundation.