Insight Islamophobia: Governing the public visibility of Islamic lifestyle in Turkey

Abstract

This article engages in a critical discussion of the ways in which public visibility of the Islamic lifestyle is governed through the practices within visual culture in Turkey. It is possible to observe that in a society with a predominantly Muslim population, the media is dominated by the secularized imagery of everyday life, which is systematically abstracted from Islamic signifiers. Following a Foucauldian theoretical framework, this article shows that visual culture provides the necessary ground for the Kemalist modernization project to legitimize particular drives, which are inherently reproduced by a state of anxiety and fear against the Islamic lifestyle. Recent controversies the Turkish context show that Islamophobia should not solely be regarded as a phenomenon, which originated and still operates mainly in the West. Rather, the case of Turkey encourages one to critically negotiate the boundaries of visual culture, which is invested with particular strategies of power that reproduce the images of Islamic lifestyle as undesirable signifiers of culture.

The emerging visibility of Islam through the powerless: Indonesian Muslim domestic helpers in Hong Kong

“…It should be noted that the cultural diversity of Indonesian FDWs are extensively heterogeneous, not all of them are religious, and some of them are non-Muslims. Yet, this paper focuses on the majority of Indonesian FDWs as Muslims, and their choice to incorporate their piety into their lifestyle, thus rendering religion visible before the eyes of their employers and public audience in Hong Kong. Mainstream literature identifies the increasing public visibility of Islam across global cities (Endelstein and Ryan 2013;Göle 2002Göle , 2011Ho 2009;Hopkins and Greenwood 2013;Landman and Wessels 2005;Rogozen-Soltar 2012;Schmidt 2011;Subijanto 2011;Yel and Nas 2014). But different from the outbreak of public opposition, political resentment, and even waves of Islamophobia, this paper shows how some Hong Kong employers and portions of the public do not stigmatize this emerging trend, but are unable to understand how religious piety impacts the daily lives of Indonesian Muslim FDWs.…”

Sosyal Medyada İslamofobik Paylaşımlar: Twitter Örneği

“…This situation has been demonstrated academically in studies conducted in Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Albania, and Malaysia. When evaluated on a country basis, Islamophobia is frequently seen in the law, university, business, and media sectors in Turkey in recent years, while it is heavily processed in traditional media with advertisements and television images, films, and soap operas (Yel and Nas, 2014). The first pillar of Islamophobic tendencies in Turkey is produced in the press or on the political ground.…”

“…Her ne kadar ilk bakışta İslamofobik tutumlar, İslam inancının az sayıda kişilerce benimsendiği coğrafyalarda daha fazla yaşandığı düşünülse de bu tarz ideolojik saplantılar, nüfusunun büyük bir kesimi Müslüman olan ülkelerde bile yaşanabilmektedir. Türkiye'de son yıllarda İslamofobiye; hukuk, üniversite, iş yeri, reklam ve televizyon görüntüleri, film ve pembe dizilerin araç yapıldığı mecralarda karşılaşılmaktadır (Yel ve Nas, 2014). Bu İslamofobik eğilimlerin geniş tabanlara yayılmasında ise medya kanalının benimsediği ideoloji ve politikadaki şahsiyetler önemli bir role sahip olmuştur (Temel, 2020, s. 164;Terri, 2019).…”

Organizing Popular Discourse with and against the Media

“…In contrast to Modi, Erdoğan makes it obvious that he understands and needs the media as an adversary to legitimate and consolidate his own leadership. The conflict is plausible to his supporters who live in the historical context of an anti-Islam ideology in the (post-)Kemalist nexus between the national media oligarchy, the state, and the military (Yel and Nas 2014). After democratizing public discourse noticeably when he first came to power, Erdoğan has, with the beginning of his second tenure as Prime Minister, increasingly tried to actively disrupt this nexus by publicly and personally interfering with the media, its content and production, and its regulations, including the allocation of licenses and ownership structures.…”