From Pro-Kemalist to the Populist and Pro-Violence Diyanet

This chapter provides the historical background of Diyanet and the theoretical framework of this study. It critically analyses the main parameters of the relationship between religion and state in contemporary Turkey, and discusses the position of Diyanet, which was created by the Kemalist regime in an effort to control Islam in Turkey, but has been transformed by the AKP into a vehicle which perpetuates its authoritarian rule and Islamist ideology. While Turkey’s once powerful secularist Kemalist elite dreamed of using Diyanet to create their own ‘ideal citizens’, the religious directorate has become increasingly Islamist under AKP rule. The AKP uses Diyanet to make Islam and religious belief a defining element of Turkish society, marginalizing non-Sunni Muslims and gradually eroding the secular character of state and society. The AKP’s instrumentalization of Diyanet reflects its ‘Zero-Sum-Game’ approach to politics, in which each Turkish citizen is transformed into either a friend or foe of the AKP and treated accordingly. In order to legitimize the AKP’s instrumentalization of Diyanet, and their transformation of the body into a vehicle for Erdoğanism, the Diyanet has been increasingly used to propagate Islamist populism, victimhood, resentment, anti-Westernism, conspiracy theories, authoritarianism, nationalism, Ottoman nostalgia, militarism, jihadism, and violence. This first chapter therefore discusses how the AKP’s emotive populism, Neo-Ottomanism, and Islamism are perpetuated by Diyanet in order to prolong AKP rule over Turkey and aid their Islamization programme. Furthermore, the theoretical link between the civilizationist populism espoused by the AKP, and the emotional appeal of faith and the collective concerns of a nation, is explored in the context of Diyanet’s Friday sermons. The first chapter also discusses the extant literature on Diyanet, and on the body’s transformation from a tool of the state used to promote the ‘moderate Islam’ tolerated by the Kemalist elite, into an Islamist ecumenical body, which the state funds and uses to demonize and dehumanize political opponents of the present AKP regime. The chapter explains the socio-theological and political nature of the Friday sermons, which have become the most important device used by the Diyanet to demonize the enemies of the AKP and their Islamizing agenda. The chapter also describes the key contributions made by this book, and the ways in which it differs from books previously published on the AKP’s transformation of Turkey and Turkish society.