ISBN: PB: 9781805267003
ISBN: HB: 9781911723837
January 2027
416 pp.
21,6x13,8 cm
24 illus.
PB:
19.99 GBP
QTY:
HB:
45.00 GBP
QTY:
Enduring Hold of Islam in Turkey
The Revival of the Religious Orders and Rise of Erdogan
A new history of modern Turkey, focussing on its fifty-year retreat from Kemalist secularism.
This is the first account in English of how Islamic religious orders dating back to Ottoman times have risen to dominate and define the future of Turkey, Europe's awkward neighbour and the major power in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Given its determined programme of secularising the people both under and after the Attaturk regime, Turkey is often projected as a model for the compatibility of Islam with parliamentary democracy. In this absorbing book, journalist and writer David S. Tonge reveals the limitations of that secularisation, and its progressive reversal, in what continues to be a profoundly religious country. He describes how Muslim Turks' religious identity has been taken over by branches of one of Islam's great religious orders, the Naqshbandis, whose profoundly anti-Western ethos was honed by British and French colonial incursions into the heartland of their faith.
Tonge's history offers a salutary alternative to the wishful narrative developed by Western chancelleries during the Cold War, one which viewed Turkey as a westernising democracy. The revival of both Turkish nationalism and Islam helped President Erdogan's rise to power, and will shape the regime that succeeds him - illuminating and understanding Turkey's realities of faith and religious politics has never been more important.
This is the first account in English of how Islamic religious orders dating back to Ottoman times have risen to dominate and define the future of Turkey, Europe's awkward neighbour and the major power in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Given its determined programme of secularising the people both under and after the Attaturk regime, Turkey is often projected as a model for the compatibility of Islam with parliamentary democracy. In this absorbing book, journalist and writer David S. Tonge reveals the limitations of that secularisation, and its progressive reversal, in what continues to be a profoundly religious country. He describes how Muslim Turks' religious identity has been taken over by branches of one of Islam's great religious orders, the Naqshbandis, whose profoundly anti-Western ethos was honed by British and French colonial incursions into the heartland of their faith.
Tonge's history offers a salutary alternative to the wishful narrative developed by Western chancelleries during the Cold War, one which viewed Turkey as a westernising democracy. The revival of both Turkish nationalism and Islam helped President Erdogan's rise to power, and will shape the regime that succeeds him - illuminating and understanding Turkey's realities of faith and religious politics has never been more important.
About the author
David Tonge has lived half of his life in Turkey. A scholar of Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, he reported from Ankara and Athens for the BBC, Guardian and Observer, then from London as the Financial Times' diplomatic correspondent. The author of "The Kremlin's Confidant", he grows citrus and olives.