Abstract:
This talk analyzes the expansion of the religious sphere in Turkey in the last two decades and focuses on the main institutional engine behind this process, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet). By discussing the female preachers employed by the Diyanet to reach more women through religious practices and the Family Guidance Bureaus established to strengthen the family through religious guidance, the paper looks at the ways in which these mechanisms expanded Diyanetâs institutional capacity to penetrate into the private sphere and to reshape family relations along religious lines.
About the Speaker:
Sevgi Adak is an Assistant Professor at Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, London. She received her PhD from Leiden University, School of Middle Eastern Studies in 2015. Prior to joining AKU-ISMC, she was a research fellow at the International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, and taught at Istanbul Bahcesehir University, Department of Sociology. Her book, Anti-Veiling Campaigns in Turkey: Gender, Power and Resistance under the Kemalist Regime, will be published by IB Tauris.
