UC Berkeley

This dissertation is a comparative analysis of the trajectory of the relations between state, society and religion in Turkey with a focus on its reflection on religious education. Turkey’s Imam Hatip high schools (IHLs) stand out as a key Islamic education institution where a rigidly secular state, religion, and society have encountered one another. This study challenges the existing literature by offering a comparative analysis of the experiences of three generations of IHL graduates between 1951 and 2010. This intergenerational comparative allows capturing the changing socio-economic dynamics of devout Muslims in Turkey.

Comparison among the religious education systems in five countries, France, the United Kingdom, the US, Indonesia, and Egypt, illustrates that relationship between state and religion is a dynamic one. Different interpretations of secularism emerge in relation to sociological changes over time, which assert itself on rethinking systems of religious education around the world. Much of the contemporary debates revolve around crafting secularism such that it helps the deepening of democracy. Turkey’s experience with secularism however offers an exceptional case where the state observes a separationist approach to religion, but also controls it. IHLs gained popularity, within this framework, as state schools where the secularist norms of the state and the spiritual values of the devout Muslims in society encountered.

This sociological analysis also illustrates that in a society where Islam is deeply embedded religious education acts as a function of upward social mobility especially for pious women. The findings of the study contributes to our understandings of gender and religious education and suggests new concepts such as “social fusion,” “self-making,” and “culture of piety” as tools for better analyzing social transformations that took place in Turkey over the last 60 years.