Social Science Research Council

“Sermons of the State: Religious Regulation and Islamic Sermons in Turkey”

My dissertation examines religious regulation in Turkey by focusing on the Directorate of Religious Affairs and the Islamic sermons it produces for mosques across the country.  Although Turkey has an avowedly secular government, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (aka the Diyanet) runs all public religious matters, from the training of imams to the management of more than 77,000 mosques. State actors in the Diyanet also produce the weekly sermons that are read nationwide during Friday prayers, with topics ranging from personal hygiene to human rights.  What expectations regarding citizenship, morality, and economic activity has the Turkish state communicated through its sermons, and how have these messages changed over time?  Under what conditions are various interests--those of lobbyists, religious elites, or other government agencies-- represented in state sermons?  I will be analyzing the content of Diyanet sermons spanning most years of the Turkish Republic to identify trends in the Diyanet’s moral discourse.  Additionally, I will study the current sermon production regime by interviewing Diyanet officials and observing sermon selection meetings in several provinces, including Istanbul, Ankara, Konya, and Izmir.  Now that sermon production has been decentralized (as of June 2006), I will be focusing on the role of provincial muftis and the relationships between federal and local religious officials.

This project will help correct ahistorical treatments of the Diyanet that present the state as unitary and presume constant antagonism toward religion.  While a growing number of scholars have demonstrated the interpenetration of religious and political institutions in Turkey, my study will be the first to bring this sensibility to the state institution where the intersection is most explicit, namely, the Diyanet.