Transformation of Sufi-Based Communities in Modern Turkey: The Nakşibendis, the Nurcus, and the Gülen Community

Abstract

As a result of the modern Turkish Republic’s constitutional emphasis on secularism, religion has generally been ascribed a marginal, or even a negative or reactionary, role in the country’s engagement with modernity. This chapter will focus on some of the Sufi-related communities active in late Ottoman and modern Turkish society. In it, I argue that this marginalisation or denial of the role of religion is strongly coloured by the official ideology, and cannot easily be maintained against more analytical approaches to the history of modern Turkey (Mardin, 1989; Atacan, 1990; Turam, 2007).