The literature on populism overwhelmingly deals with the factors behind the rise of populism: the supply factors, and the economic and political crises. However, there is a lack of engagement in the literature on the construction of populist narratives and especially on the relations between populist narratives and violence. This paper addresses these gaps. Based on an empirically rich case study of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its leader President Recep T. Erdoğan, it shows that the populist narrative of the party and its leader is necropolitical as it is based on narratives of martyrdom, blood and death. The paper also shows that to maintain authoritarian stability, the incumbents instrumentalise these populist necropolitical narratives for repression, legitimation and co-optation. We analyse this complex case by combining the literatures on populism, necropolitics, politics of martyrdom and authoritarianism, and contribute to all of them.

The literature on martyrdom has not, so far, systematically analysed a constitutionally secular state’s extensive use of religion in propagating martyrdom narratives by using state-controlled religious institutions. This paper addresses this gap in martyrdom literature. In addition, even though some studies have analysed how martyrdom narratives have been used for political purposes in Turkey for mythmaking and building a collective memory, a religious institution’s active use by the state for the purposes of mythmaking and collective memory building has not been studied. This paper shows that the contents of the Friday sermons, that reach at least 50 percent of the country’s adult males every week, have moved from Turkish nationalist understanding of militarism and martyrdom to more radical, Islamist and pro-violence interpretations that actively promote dying for the nation, homeland, religion and God. The sermons also emphasise that new generations must be raised with this pro-violence religious spirit, which is also novel.

One of the most widely used and influential ways of creating foundational myths for authoritarian legitimation is to construct a necropolitical narrative around the significance of dying for the nation, homeland, state and the leader, i.e. martyrdom. Mbembe’s concept ‘necropolitics’ (the right of the sovereign to determine who shall live and who shall die) has been expanded to include the pollical instrumentalization of martyrdom narratives. However, the literature has not analyzed the necropolitical martyr-icons. This paper aims to address this gap by looking at two historical episodes in Turkey, one in the 1930s dominated by secularists and post-2016 dominated by Islamists.

Turkish Islam has been defined as unique and exceptional, and it is suggested that it is an antidote to radical Islamic ideologies due to its adherence to the supposedly moderate and rational Hanafi-Maturidi theology, which is considered to have an inclusive and tolerant Sufi character. Turkish Islam is mostly defined by its Gümüşhanevi lineage, the most successful, though not theologically heterogeneous, of all active Naqshbandi communities in Turkey. Sharing a belief in its non-revolutionary character, some have asserted that it is open to democratic values. This study delves into the concept of ‘Turkish Islam’ in the belief that there is a lack of in-depth textual and methodological analysis to assess these claims. Based on a text-based analysis of primary sources, particularly the works of Ahmed Ziyaeddin Gümüşhanevi and Mehmed Zahid Kotku, two leading masters of the Naqshbandi-Gümüşhanevi discipline, this study uncovers the foundational religious motivation and codes behind Turkish Islam. As a research methodology, content analysis with purposive sampling was conducted, focusing on six of the most defining issues of Islam, al-wala’ wal-bara’, apostasy, jihad, the Islamic state, women, and art and philosophy. The study concludes that Turkish Islam is not unique or even exceptional either at the theological and discursive levels, nor does it necessarily demonstrate a willingness to embrace the values attributed to it.

Blame avoidance has been one of the most applied strategies by policy makers in both democratic and non-democratic regimes to avoid responsibility and accountability in cases of failure and tragic events. It is also known that politicians have used religion for Machiavellian purposes, as exactly advised by Machiavelli. However, a systematic empirical analysis of how religion is used for blame avoidance by politicians has not been conducted. In this article, we aim to address this gap by examining the empirical data derived from the weekly Friday sermon texts produced by Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs and delivered in more than 90 thousand mosques every week to a large segment of the population in Turkey, where the majority claims to be religious. Starting with its violent response to the peaceful Gezi protests in 2013, the ruling AKP has opened up a new phase in Turkish political history by resorting to civilizational populism: it blamed the Western world for financing and masterminding the protests, using the protestors as internal pawns to attack Turkey and the Muslim World, suppressed the protests brutally and entered into a populist authoritarian regime. Our paper shows, following this turn, how the Diyanet sermons started using religion to help with the AKP’s blame avoidance. The Diyanet either parroted the AKP’s conspiratorial narrative or tried to convince the citizens that all negativities are works of God and with these humans are being tested by God. The AKP’s use of religion to avoid blame is a text-book case of how both a religious institution and religious discourse can be used to help the incumbent avoid responsibility. Whenever, there was a problem that would the AKP votes, the Diyanet’s sermons tried to shift the blame to either God or citizens or conspiratorial enemies.