Under the Banner of Islam

Abstract

Abstract How do religious, ethnic, and national identities interact in religiously homogenous ethnic conflicts? Is it possible for religion to act as a resolution tool in such conflicts? Why? Why not? In search for answers to these questions, Under the Banner of Islam focuses on the ambivalent role Sunni Islam has played in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict—both as a conflict-resolution tool and as a tool of resistance—in the last two decades. Relying mainly on participant observation in Civil Friday Prayers and 62 interviews conducted in three different cities in Turkey (Istanbul and the majority-Kurdish Diyarbakir and Batman) between June 2012 and June 2013, it demonstrates that Sunni Islam has had a very limited impact as a conflict-resolution tool in Turkey. Blending interview data with a detailed historical institutional analysis that goes back as early as the nineteenth century, it argues that the strength of Turkish and Kurdish nationalisms, the symbiotic relationship between Turkey’s religious and political fields, religious elites’ varying conceptualizations of religious and ethnic identities, and the recent political developments in the region (particularly the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region, Rojava, in Syria) have all contributed to this outcome. The resulting narrative is not only a record of religion, ethnicity, and nationalism in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict, but also an investigation of how ethnic and religious identities are negotiated in conflict resolution and how symbolic boundaries are drawn in ethnic conflict zones.