Religion and politics in contemporary Turkey: attitudes of atheists

Abstract

Abstract. As contemporary societies tend to experience a more heterogeneous religious landscape, it becomes more difficult for governments to accommodate religious differences, various beliefs and non-religion within the realm of politics. By drawing upon semi-structured interviews with 12 self-identified atheists from different backgrounds in Turkey, this paper explores the attitudes of atheists towards the intersection of religion and politics in contemporary Turkey. In this paper, the concept of hegemony by Antonio Gramsci is used in order to analyze the hegemonic position of Islam within the realm of politics in contemporary Turkish society. Rather than a Marxist view of a clear-cut dichotomy of classes as ruling and ruled, a Bourdieuan approach, where society isthought to be consisting of many "fields," including religion and many groups that strive to gain more power within these fields, was adopted. The results indicated that atheists perceive religion and politics as closely intertwined, as politics are perceived as being strongly influenced by religion. The close connection between politics and religion is then seen as leading to an increase in religiosity in society, as well as to increasing pressure on atheists both by the state and the public.

State Policies and The Increasing Number of Atheism in The Middle East: A Case Study of Saudi and Turkey

“…Penelitian tersebut menguatkan hasil riset Coleman (Coleman, 2000) tentang kebijakan negara dan tingkat peningkatan ateisme di negara-negara Uni Soviet dan Remmel (Remmel, 2016) di Estonia. Kasapoglu (Kasapoglu, 2017) dan Azak (Azak, 2018) dalam penelitiannya menyimpulkan bahwa kedekatan negara dengan Islam di Turki membuat munculnya gerakan ateisme di ranah publik. Studi ini mencoba untuk melihat tahapan munculnya ateisme di Turki dan membandingkannya dengan Saudi yang memiliki bentuk negara yang berbeda.…”