UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Schooling, Islamization, and Religious Mobilization in Turkey Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4z81p8m8 Author Ozgen, Zeynep Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Schooling, Islamization, and Religious Mobilization in Turkey A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology by Zeynep Ozgen 2014 © Copyright by Zeynep Ozgen 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Schooling, Islamization, and Religious Mobilization in Turkey by Zeynep Ozgen Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Rogers Brubaker, Chair Scholars of Islamist mobilization commonly rely on typological explanations to interpret the motivations, strategies, and goals of religious activists. Such explanations often characterize Islamist movements as “political” or “militant” when they contest state power, and as “civil” or “apolitical” when they do not. This dissertation seeks to overcome the prevailing typological tendencies in the literature and to rethink the conventional dichotomies of the political and the social. The dissertation examines a religious pedagogical movement in Turkey that eschews conventional institutions of politics, and focuses, on the surface, on “teaching religion to fellow Muslims.” In doing so, it aims to explain why, how, and with what consequences social movements challenge the state’s monopoly over forming and reforming individuals, their morality, subjectivity, and culture. The dissertation draws on eighteen months of fieldwork in Turkey in formal and clandestine sites of religious socialization and pedagogy, one hundred interviews with key local and national actors, and archival work in national libraries. The ii dissertation makes three contributions to the study of social movements, politics, and social change. First, it advances the social movement literature by documenting how presumably non- political movements that appear on the surface to be concerned with moral reform are in fact deeply political and transformative in nature. Second, it deepens and broadens theories of social and cultural reproduction by demonstrating the centrality of a relatively understudied field—the field of religious socialization/pedagogy—to struggles over creating “orthodoxy” or “correct” forms of knowledge. Third, by extending the study of religious mobilization to a traditionally secular political system, it enlarges the scope of the literature on Islamization, pietism, and sociopolitical change and lays the groundwork for future comparative studies. iii The dissertation of Zeynep Ozgen is approved. Andreas Wimmer James Gelvin Rogers Brubaker, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2014 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................................ vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................................... viii VITA ......................................................................................................................................................... xi A NOTE ON TURKISH AND ARABIC WORDS USED IN THE TEXT ........................................ xiii GLOSSARY OF COMMONLY USED TURKISH AND ARABIC TERMS ...................................... xiv ABBREVATIONS ................................................................................................................................. xvi INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................... 1 Sociopolitical Islamization and pedagogic movement in a changing political context .................. 12 Sociology of Islamist activism and social movement theory ..................................................................... 15 Social and cultural reproduction ........................................................................................................................... 21 Context and method .................................................................................................................................................... 26 Organization of the dissertation ............................................................................................................................ 31 CHAPTER 1: .......................................................................................................................................... 34 POLITICAL STRUGGLES OVER RELIGIOUS EDUCATION FROM THE LATE OTTOMAN PERIOD TO THE PRESENT ............................................................................................................... 34 The Ottoman madrasa from the early-modern to the modern age ........................................................ 36 Ottoman reforms during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ............................................. 41 Education in the new republic ................................................................................................................................ 44 Struggles in the early republic and beyond ...................................................................................................... 50 A clandestine world .................................................................................................................................................... 51 The controversies over Imam-Hatip schools ................................................................................................... 56 Islamist activism in a hospitable context ........................................................................................................... 66 1980 military coup, changing religious landscape, and new actors ...................................................... 70 The 1997 coup and the Islamists’ shift to underground activity ............................................................. 80 The 2007 soft coup and end of secular supremacy ....................................................................................... 87 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................................................... 90 CHAPTER 2: .......................................................................................................................................... 92 OBJECTIVES OF THE TEBLIĞ MOVEMENT .................................................................................. 92 Institutional actors: the role of cemaats and vakıfs in the tebliğ movement ...................................... 93 Objections and objectives of the tebliğ movement ........................................................................................ 96 Political secularism and the resurgence of a tradition ................................................................................ 98 Moral disintegration and pious salvation ........................................................................................................ 107 Hedonism against the pious self .......................................................................................................................... 116 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................................... 130 v CHAPTER 3: ....................................................................................................................................... 132 FORMAL SITES OF ISLAMIZATION: A CASE STUDY OF AN IMAM-HATIP ....................... 132 A brief history .............................................................................................................................................................. 134 Pedagogic struggles in practice ............................................................................................................................ 137 Domains of naturalization of habits ................................................................................................................... 142 Students .......................................................................................................................................................................... 150 Cultivating the ideal youth: leadership, morality, and body ................................................................... 162 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................................... 184 CHAPTER 4: ....................................................................................................................................... 186 SEMI-FORMAL AND INFORMAL SITES OF ISLAMIZATION .................................................. 186 The legal status of religious institutions .......................................................................................................... 187 Semi-formal sites of Islamic education ............................................................................................................. 190 Youth study center (gençlik etüt merkezi) ......................................................................................................