This article focuses on the complex relations between Turkey’s Presidency of Religious Affairs (the Diyanet) and the AKP in the last decade. It claims that the Diyanet, under AKP rule, has been transformed into a pliable state apparatus geared towards implementing the political ideology of the ruling cadre. In exploring this recent transformation, it analyses the ways in which this institution’s role has become synchronized with the ruling party’s discourses and actions, by giving examples from recent discussions on gender, social media, political economy and relations with other social groups.

On 11 January 2016, 1128 academics in Turkey and abroad signed a petition calling on Turkish authorities to cease state violence in mainly Kurdish populated areas of the country, which had been under curfew and an extended state of emergency. The petition received an immediate reaction from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who accused the signatories of treason and terrorist propaganda. He subsequently demanded that public prosecuters launch an investigation. Criminalisation of the petition has been exacerbated by disciplinary action by universities against many of the signatories. Many have suffered insults, arrest, detention or suspension as a result of the ensuing smear campaign. This massive crackdown on academic freedom has been masked by discourses of counterterrorism, which have also been deployed to criminalise dissent more generally in Turkey as a part of a process of rapid “democratic retrenchment” since 2013. This article is an attempt to put the criminalisation of academics within the larger framework of human rights violations, increasing curtailments of academic freedom and rising authoritarianism in Turkey. It argues that the prosecution of the signatories of the petition is an extension of an established tradition of targeting academic freedom in times of political crisis in Turkey but is also a product of growing authoritarianism under the ruling party and President Erdoğan. It shows that counterterrorism laws can be extended far beyond eliminating security threats by instrumentalising them to suppress dissent in a declining democracy.

How does Turkey's Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) act as an instrument of foreign policy (FP)? What are the factors that allow such an instrumentalization of Islam in Turkish FP? In addressing these questions, this paper uses semi-structured expert interviews from Bulgaria and the Netherlands. Although both countries host a sizeable Muslim minority, these populations differ in their characteristics and historical ties with Turkey. ComparingDiyanet’s role in the Netherlands with its recent Turkish-Muslim diaspora, and in Bulgaria with its centuries-old Muslim minority allows us to reveal variation in the practical engagement strategies that Diyanet adopts in different country contexts. Thus, this paper advances two main claims; first,Diyanetserves as a primary FP tool of Turkey in countries with a significant Turkish-Muslim minority. Secondly, this instrumentalization destabilizes secularization projects both at home and abroad.

Abstract: The diaspora studies literature recently has indicated an expansion in state-led diaspora engagement initiatives and burgeoning diaspora governance institutions around the world. Home states have correlated concepts such as public diplomacy and soft power with these nascent incentives to cultivate and mobilize diasporas for state interests. Despite the interpretation of these developments as the expansion of citizenship rights for the diaspora and their systematic incorporation back into the home nation, some authors remain skeptical about the multifaceted motives behind such initiatives. Authoritarian states particularly employ diaspora governance as a mechanism to monitor and control diaspora groups, which home communities perceive as dissidents. Using Turkey and its recent diaspora governance policy as a case study, this article demonstrates that diaspora governance enables the state to create, depending on the context, potentially ideological and repressive transnational state apparatuses that can assume both positive and negative forms.

This article introduces a collection of articles that explore the role of religion (Sunni Islam) in the transformation of Turkey under the reign of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP). This special issue argues that the Turkish understanding of secularism was also one of the building blocks or/and constitutive elements of Turkey’s modernisation until the rise of the AKP. Currently, however, it seems that religion has become a new or re-born element of the new Turkey and has been transforming many areas such as: the media, the Kurdish issue, implementation of the rule of law, foreign policy and gender issues. This special issue aims to scrutinise the question: how does a religion-based transformation in Turkey influence the raison d’etat of the state?

Since roughly 2011, the Turkish state and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been going through a process of mutual transformation. Some of the historical apprehensions, biases and frustrations exhibited by Turkey as a middle power have been absorbed by the relatively reformist AKP. Conversely, the AKP and its undisputed leader Erdoğan have seen their socio-political fears, power based conflicts and ethno-religious desires become dominant in all areas, including religion. As a consequence of this bilateral transformation, Turkey has become both an inclusionary and a hegemonic-authoritarian state, and at the same time a weak one. Within this new identity and structure of the state, Sunni Islam has become one of the regime’s key focal points, with a new logic. This article seeks to explain the transformation of the relations between the AKP’s Turkish state, religion and religious groups, by scrutinising Karrie Koesel’s logic of state-religion interaction in authoritarian regimes.