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This edited volume, comprising chapters by leading academics and experts, aims to clarify the complexity of Turkey’s Kurdish question. The Kurdish question is a long-standing, protracted issue, which gained regional and international significance largely in the last thirty years. The Kurdish people who represent the largest ethnic minority in the Middle East without a state have demanded autonomy and recognition since the post-World I wave of self-governance in the region, and their nationalist claims have further intensified since the end of the Cold War. The present volume first describes the evolution of Kurdish nationalism, its genesis during the late nineteenth century in the Ottoman ...
This is a book about an Islamic movement, the Gülen Movement, that is rooted in a moderate version of Islam and that promotes interfaith and intercultural dialog and global peace. Based on interviews with supporters of the movement in Turkey and in the U.S. and visits to Gülen-inspired schools, hospitals, newspapers and relief organizations, the book describes a movement that has millions of supporters in Turkey and that has spread to over 100 countries on five continents.
Fethullah Gülen is a moderate Turkish Muslim scholar who is known mostly for his education and dialogue activities. The Hizmet Movement, inspired by Gülen, has established hundreds of education and dialogue institutions throughout the world. Several books and hundreds of articles and news reports have been written about Gülen himself and the movement. In recent years, a defamation campaign has been launched against Gülen and the Hizmet Movement. Although these defamation articles may seem random, this book will show that the articles are written strategically in a campaign manner. In Strategic Defamation of Fethullah Gülen, close to 500 defamation articles, books, and other forms of writings are analyzed according to their languages. Koç concludes that these defamations are not random and that they appear according to their respective audiences.
This book examines key debates on religion and democratization from three main perspectives: Religious traditions have core elements which are more or less conducive to democratization and democracy; Religious traditions may be multi-vocal – but at any moment there may be dominant voices more or less receptive to and encouraging of democratization; Religious actors rarely if ever determine democratization outcomes. However, they may in various ways and with a range of outcomes be of significance for democratization. The contributions are divided into two sections: (1) Religion, democratization and democracy, and (2) Secularization, democratization and democracy. Overall, they examine the t...
This volume of essays on the Gulen, or Hizmet (service) movement, a Turkish, Sufi Muslim, and humanitarian civil society group, looks at the recent activities of its followers to practice their form of Islam and carry out collective interfaith projects at the international level. It adds to the newly burgeoning discourse by focusing on the ways in which participants challenge ideological and sectarian boundaries. Included are essays which discuss how the movement is organized, structured, and institutionalized in many parts of the world, explore Turkey's global influence, evaluate criticisms of the movement, and suggest directions for further research. While most previous scholarly attention has focused on the theological and philosophical ideas of Fethullah Gulen, the movement's inspirational figure, less attention has been paid to the ways in which participants have interpreted and carried out Gulen's messages in the contemporary world.
Like anywhere else, the present-day Islamic world too is grappling with modernity and postmodernity, secularisation and globalisation. Muslims are raising questions about religious representations and authority. This has given rise to the emergence of alternative Islamic discourses which challenge binary oppositions and dichotomies of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, continuity and change, state and civil society. It also leads to a dispersal of authority, a collapse of existing hierarchical structures and gender roles. This book further argues that the centre of gravity of many of these alternative Islamic discourses is shifting from the Arabic-speaking 'heartland' towards the geographical peripheries of the Muslim world and expatriate Muslims in North America and Europe. At the same time, in view of recent seismic shifts in the political constellation of the Middle East, the trends discussed in this book hold important clues for the possible direction of future developments in that volatile part of the Muslim world.
The Turkish Migration Conference 2016 is the fourth event in this series, we are proud to organise and host at the University of Vienna, Austria. Perhaps given the growing number of participants and variety in scope of research and debates included at the Conference, it is now an established quality venue fostering scholarship in Turkish Migration Studies. Over the last five years, we have seen over 1000 abstracts submitted to the conference and year on year the number of accepted presentations grew. This year, the conference accommodates over 350 presentations by hundreds of academics from all around the World. The Migration Conference attracting such a healthy number of academics is a good indicator of the success and means the conference serving its purpose and offer a good opportunity for scholarly exchange and networking. Main speakers include Jeffrey Cohen, Ibrahim Sirkeci, Philip Martin, Gudrun Biffl, Karen Phalet, Samim Akgönül, and Katharine Sarikakis.
This book encompasses a wide range of human experiences, delving into mystical encounters, dreams, altruism, hard work, teamwork, cultural misunderstandings, amusing anecdotes, misconceptions, success, failure, happiness, and poignant tales of four Hizmet affiliated high school graduates and teachers in Indonesia. They sowed the seeds of successful education and eventually departed from Indonesia. Contrary to the claims of some scholars, they do not belong to a Sufi Order nor can they be classified as traditionalists, although they exhibit characteristics that may align with both. Instead, they can be aptly described as modern dervishes. The book's title, The Stories of Modern Dervishes in Indonesia: Tolong, is derived from the true account of three orphan students whom modern dervishes rescued from the aftermath of a tsunami. If I were to read these stories without conducting on-site research, it would be difficult to believe them. Readers will undoubtedly find this book engrossing and captivating.
For the past decade and a half, the world has witnessed a precipitous decline of democratic countries and the consequent rise of autocrats. How Autocrats Rise: Sequences of Democratic Backsliding challenges the conventional wisdom and offers an institutional-ideological approach to understand the phenomenon, examines the steps of emergent autocrats, and analyzes the methods of legitimizing their rules. Employing the new framework, the book provides incisive analyses of four countries located in four different regions with dissimilar national features – Bangladesh, Bolivia, Hungary, and Turkey, and demonstrates that political developments in these countries have followed a similar, specific pattern resulting in various shades of autocracy. Theoretically enriched and empirically grounded, this exceptionally timely book makes significant contribution to the democratic backsliding literature while offering insights on how to forestall an autocratic era.
Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop, Predeal, Romania, 24-27 May, 1999