Spreading Whose Word? Transnational Imams, Religion and Politics in Turkey's Mosques Abroad

This research project investigates the religious policy of the Turkish state towards its diasporas and the global Muslim communities in the UK, France and the USA. The ethnographic examination focuses on translational Turkish mosques and their imams sent by the Directorate of the Religious Affairs (Diyanet). The project evaluates the modalities and limits of the Turkish religious policy by concentrating on the training, motivations, mobility and achievements of transnational imams and their mosques, as well as the various ways they are perceived by the local Turkish and global Muslim communities who host them. By concentrating on the lived experience of Turkish and global Muslim communities around the Turkish mosques, the research, therefore, contributes to a critical approach to soft power, assuming that subaltern agents and interactions on the ground are as decisive as policymakers in promoting national and religious ideologies abroad. Through an interdisciplinary approach at the crossroads of sociology, anthropology and political science, the research provides a comprehensive picture of the Turkish religious policies and its quest for the global Muslim leadership in transnational settings. 

The research adopts an ethnographic and sociological approach that places the “transnational mosques and imams” at the core of the research, as the main vectors of the Turkish religious policies in transnational settings. Ethnographically grounded examination of this Islamist transnational ideology and its reception on the ground helps us to better understand some of the pressing issues and debates around Islam and Muslims in the West, Islamophobia and transnational religious ideologies and mobilisations. Therefore, the research findings and outputs will be beneficial to the interested scientific community, the wider society and policy making. The project has so far achieved most of these objectives via ethnographically grounded research that brings the voice and perspectives of these subaltern agents, whose voice most often is unheard. Their perspectives bring an original contribution to the existing literature by challenging most of the assumptions made and enabling the scientific community and the policymakers to better understand the ways in which religious institutions operate in transnational settings and to what extent the influence of national policies determine social and political lives of its diasporas. It will benefit the policymakers in the aforementioned countries to better understand the particularities of religious diasporas and equip them with tools to develop better policies towards cohesion and integration of the Muslim diasporas.

The main research objectives of the project are,

1. Critical evaluation of the so-called “Turkish soft power” and its religious dimension, going beyond the usual intentionalist bias to question the modalities, achievements and limits of the Turkish state policy towards its diaspora and global Muslim communities.

2. An innovative approach to the circulation of a Turkish version of political Islam, through the mobility of its main vectors, the “transnational imams”. The proposed research studies their training, motivations, patterns of mobility and personal experience to analyse their role in the circulation of an official version of Turkish Islam and identify possible gaps between the objectives of their mission and their actual fulfilment.

3. A qualitative analysis of the reception of this religious policy in the Turkish diaspora and the global Muslim communities settled in France, the U.K and the U.S.

Project Team

Dr Mehmet Kurt
Principal Investigator
London School of Economics & Yale University  

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Professor Marcia C. Inhorn
Supervisor
Yale University 

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Professor Esra Özyürek 
Supervisor
University of Cambridge

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Professor Jonathan White
Supervisor
London School of Economics

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Professor Elise Massicard 
Supervisor
Sciences Po

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Professor Ayça Çubukçu 
Mentor
London School of Economics

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Project Details 

This project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 796193.