The pioneering scholar of religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith made this remark seventy-five years ago in an article on Turkey, first published in Hyderabad in 1951 (Smith Reference Smith1951). Smith had visited Turkey in the autumn of 1948 to observe transformations already underway since the transition to the multi-party system in 1946 and the gradual loosening of strict secularism. He was among a broader group of Western scholars and Orientalists who turned their attention to what they described as an “Islamic revival,” a process that began during the early Cold War and accelerated with the Democrat Party’s (Demokrat Parti; DP) rise to power in 1950, ending the Republican People’s Party’s (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi; CHP) single-party rule. For these observers, Turkey represented a unique case, having implemented one of the most far-reaching secularization and Westernization programs among Muslim-majority countries. These reforms included the abolition of the Caliphate, the closure of Sufi institutions, the secularization of education, the adoption of European civil law, and the reconfiguration of everyday life through alphabet, dress, and calendar reforms in the 1920s.

What primarily attracted these scholars’ attention in the 1950s, however, were developments associated with Sunni, “orthodox,” Islam, such as the reintroduction of religious instruction in schools, the restoration of the Arabic call to prayer, increasing mosque attendance, and the establishment of the Faculty of Theology at Ankara University and imam-hatip schools to train a new generation of “enlightened religious leaders” (Lewis Reference Lewis1952, 41; Reed Reference Reed1954, 271–273; Reference Reed1957a, 336; Reference Reed and Frye1957b, 121–133; Rustow Reference Rustow and Frye1957, 93–95; Smith Reference Smith1957, 184–186; Thomas Reference Thomas1954, 182–183). Alevis received only marginal attention in this literature (Reed Reference Reed1954, 277; Reference Reed and Frye1957b, 119–120), while Sufi orders were framed either as politically suspect groups capable of influencing the masses (Lewis Reference Lewis1952, 42–43; Reed Reference Reed1954, 274–275; Rustow Reference Rustow and Frye1957, 98) or selectively represented through “modern” and culturally legible examples, such as the Mevlevis and Rifais, reframed as mysticism in Western terms (Reed Reference Reed and Frye1957b, 138–143). They were all curious where this revival might lead. Bernard Lewis, whose work helped shape the enduring binary between a strong secular state and a weak religious society (Lewis Reference Lewis1961), expressed hope for a synthesis of “the best elements of West and East” and a “true revival of a religious faith on the level of modern thought and life” (Lewis Reference Lewis1952, 48). Smith similarly suggested that if the Turks “choose orthodoxy, it will be significant” (Smith Reference Smith1957, 189).

In the following three decades, Western scholarly interest in Sunni Islam in Turkey gradually declined.Footnote ¹ Instead, the works of two Turkish sociologists, Niyazi Berkes – who, after being forced to leave Turkey, joined Smith’s Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University – and Şerif Mardin became the primary reference points for understanding Islam in Turkey in Western academia (Berkes Reference Berkes1964, Reference Berkes1973; Mardin Reference Mardin1973, Reference Mardin1989, Reference Mardin2006). Their analyses reinforced the dominant state–society binary and its related formulations, including center–periphery and orthodoxy–heterodoxy distinctions.Footnote ² With the exception of Toprak’s early study (Toprak Reference Toprak1981), it was not until the 1990s that Islam in Turkey again attracted sustained scholarly attention.Footnote ³ This renewed interest was driven by Turkish political scientists and Western anthropologists, whose work focused on secularism, the rise of political Islam, and Islamist movements (Çağaptay Reference Çağaptay2006; Davison Reference Davison1998; Göle Reference Göle1996; Navaro-Yashin Reference Navaro-Yashin2002; Özyürek Reference Özyürek2006; Shankland Reference Shankland1999; Tapper Reference Tapper1991; White Reference White2005),Footnote ⁴ as well as on Alevism (Dressler Reference Dressler2013; Markussen Reference Markussen2010; Olsson et al. Reference Olsson, Özdalga and Raudvere1998; Shankland Reference Shankland2003; Tambar Reference Tambar2014). By the twenty-first century, political science, sociology, and anthropology had come to dominate the study of Islam in modern Turkey, with particular emphasis on secularism, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı), and the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP) (Akan Reference Akan2017; Gözaydın Reference Gözaydın2009; Kaya Reference Kaya2018; Kuru Reference Kuru2009; Lord Reference Lord2018; Maritato Reference Maritato2020; Tuğal Reference Tuğal2009; Walton Reference Walton2017; Yavuz and Öztürk Reference Yavuz and Öztürk2020), as well as on Sufism (Silverstein Reference Silverstein2011; Soileau Reference Soileau2018; Vicini Reference Vicini2019). Historical approaches remained comparatively limited, despite notable exceptions (Azak Reference Azak2010; Bein Reference Bein2011; Bozdoğan and Kasaba Reference Bozdoğan and Kasaba1997; Kezer Reference Kezer2015; Küçük Reference Küçük2002; Özoğlu Reference Özoğlu2011). In short, just as the history of Islam in the Ottoman Empire was largely left to sociologists and political scientists (Kırmızı Reference Kırmızı2019, 4–5), the Republican period was likewise predominantly interpreted through sociological and political scientific frameworks, supplemented by anthropological studies.

Recent innovative work by historians that rethinks Republican history and challenges the strong state–weak society binary has begun to address Islam and its negotiations (Adak Reference Adak2022; Brockett Reference Brockett2011; Lamprou Reference Lamprou2015; Metinsoy Reference Metinsoy2021; Pekesen Reference Pekesen2020; Türköz Reference Türköz2018; Yenen and Zürcher Reference Yenen and Zürcher2023; Yılmaz Reference Yılmaz2013). Yet these studies largely omit Sufi actors, pay limited attention to the religious worldviews of Alevis, and continue to frame “non-orthodox” forms of Islam as “heterodox” or “popular.” At the same time, recent insightful studies of Sunni theology and Islamist actors (Dorroll Reference Dorroll2023; Hammond Reference Hammond2022) and on Alevis (Özkul and Markussen Reference Özkul and Markussen2022; Weineck and Zimmermann Reference Weineck and Zimmermann2018) remain largely disconnected from one another. The Handbook of Religion in Turkey (Tee et al. Reference Tee, Vicini and Dorroll2024), despite offering a comprehensive overview of the field, makes only limited use of recent critical approaches in Islamic studies.

This brief state of the art in Anglophone scholarship – based primarily on monographs and edited volumes – reveals the need for alternative approaches and methodologies in the study of Islam in Republican Turkey. This dossier contributes to that effort by bringing together a multidisciplinary team of scholars from history, literature, and musicology. We shift the focus away from predominantly political, sociological, and anthropological analyses toward the lived experiences and intellectual worlds of diverse Sunni, Alevi, and Sufi actors in Republican history. Smith regarded the early Cold War as a period “important as developments in the history of Turkey,” but emphasized that his primary interest lay “rather in the recent phenomena viewed as new developments within the history of Islam” (Smith Reference Smith1957, 187). Likewise, we seek to situate the experiences of Republican actors in Turkey within broader critical debates in the study of Islam.

Inspired by critiques of the modern concept of religion that expose its privileging of belief over materiality and mind over body (Chidester Reference Chidester2018; Houtman and Meyer Reference Houtman and Meyer2012; Morgan Reference Morgan2021), critical studies of Islam have emerged as an expanding and increasingly influential field (Bigelow Reference Bigelow2021; Deeb and Harb Reference Deeb and Harb2013; Lange Reference Lange2022; Marei et al. Reference Marei, Shanneik and Funke2024; Marsden Reference Marsden2005; McGregor Reference McGregor2020; Schielke and Debevec Reference Schielke and Debevec2012). Within this scholarship, Sufism is no longer treated as a marginal or derivative phenomenon but as an integral part of Islamic thought and practice (Ahmed Reference Ahmed2016; Green Reference Green2012; Knysh Reference Knysh2017; Malik and Zarrabi-Zadeh Reference Malik and Zarrabi-Zadeh2019), a shift paralleled in recent re-evaluations of Alevism (Dinç Reference Dinç and Seyed-Gohrab2025b; Karakaya-Stump Reference Karakaya-Stump2020; Karamustafa Reference Karamustafa and Mir-Kasimov2014; Oktay-Uslu Reference Oktay-Uslu2020b). Similarly, innovative studies on Turkey that foreground discourse, materiality, heritage, embodiment, the senses, space, networks, and media constitute a growing body of work (Dinç Reference Dinç2025a; Dressler Reference Dressler, Peter, Schrode and Stegmann2025; Emre Reference Emre2023; Greve et al. Reference Greve, Özdemir and Motika2020a; Gruber Reference Gruber, Marei, Shanneik and Funke2024; Hammond Reference Hammond2023; Karamustafa Reference Karamustafa and King2017; Oktay-Uslu Reference Oktay-Uslu2020a; Öner Reference Öner2019; Silverstein Reference Silverstein2008; Soileau Reference Soileau and Bigelow2021; Uzun and Macaraig Reference Uzun and Macaraig2022; Zimmermann et al. Reference Zimmermann, Karolewski and Langer2018). However, these strands of scholarship have not always been brought into dialogue. Our dossier seeks to advance this conversation by integrating the study of Sunni Islam, Alevism, and Sufism within a shared analytical framework.

The articles in this dossier foreground Sufism and Alevism not as marginal, residual, or heterodox phenomena, but as constitutive dimensions of Muslim religious life in Turkey. Rather than reproducing the binary of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, the contributions collectively propose a rethinking of Islam in Turkey as a plural, dynamic, and historically contingent field, shaped by shifting relations between state power, secular rationality, and lived religious practices. Our interdisciplinarity is reflected in the novel approaches adopted, including attention to materiality, orality, embodiment and the senses, prosopography, and the gendered discursive construction of religious authority. Methodologically, the contributions draw on archival research, and textual and discourse analysis, revealing how diverse forms of religious life in Turkey have been produced and negotiated not only through institutions and policies, but also through materiality, language, affect, and performance. The contributions examine diverse religious actors, media, and discourses to demonstrate how Islamic life in Republican Turkey was constituted through vernacular practices, embodied traditions, institutional negotiations, and regimes of knowledge.

Gökçen B. Dinç’s article examines vernacular books as religious media, revealing common devotional practices surrounding Nur Muhammad (a divine light) and the veneration of the Ahl al-Bayt across Sunni and Alevi communities, thereby challenging the assumption that the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE constitutes an exclusively ShiÊ¿i premise (Marei et al. Reference Marei, Shanneik and Funke2024, 33). Inspired by Lange (Reference Lange2012), Seyed-Gohrab (Reference Seyed-Gohrab2021), and Karamustafa (Reference Karamustafa2021), who each emphasize the role of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish in the history of Islam, she introduces the concept of “Islam in Turkish.” The concept captures a historically specific religiosity formed and transmitted across generations through Turkish in Anatolia and the Balkans. She argues that the most decisive rupture in Sunni Muslim religiosity in Turkey occurred between 1944 and the late 1980s.

Zeynep Oktay and Ulaş Özdemir focus on Alevi deyiş, religious poems sung with music, as an embodied and affective medium of Alevi identity. In contrast to the rupture identified for Sunni Muslims, they show how poetic and musical transmission prevented a comparable break within Alevi tradition. Moving beyond the reductive paradigm of traditional versus modern, or the search for an “essence of Alevism” or a “real Alevi” (Greve et al. Reference Greve, Özdemir, Motika, Greve, Özdemir and Motika2020b, 7), they demonstrate how deyiş sustain Alevi communal identity and historical consciousness through performance, memory, and emotion. Given that deyiş were also sung by non-Alevis and listened to by Sunnis up until today, their contribution further complicates the political Alevi–Sunni divide in Turkey.

Brett Wilson revisits the status of Sufi leaders in the early Turkish Republic following the legal ban of 1925, offering a perspective that challenges both rupture-centered narratives and persecution accounts. He questions the dominant anti-Sufi narrative of Kemalist historiography as well as Islamist depictions of systematic suppression by demonstrating that many shaykhs were incorporated into state institutions and public religious life. Through this analysis, he reveals patterns of adaptation, integration, and mutual negotiation between Sufi authority, the secular Turkish nation-state, and the Diyanet. In this respect, the Turkish case differs both from Islamic reform movements characterized by strong critiques of Sufism (Sorgenfrei Reference Sorgenfrei2018, 157–159) and from contexts of severe persecution such as that of the Spanish clergy or Soviet Muslim leaders.

Finally, Çiğdem Buğdaycı examines the medicalization of Sufism in Refik Halid Karay’s Kadınlar Tekkesi, showing how psychiatric discourse recasts Sufi practices as pathological and abnormal through gendered and scientific regimes of truth. Karay, defined as a mürteci (reactionary) (Philliou Reference Philliou2021), stages a complex interplay between literature, science, and religious discourse. The secular anti-Sufi critique, originally rooted in religious polemic, is translated into scientific terminology, thereby enhancing its epistemic legitimacy, reminiscent of what has been described as a religio-secular continuum (Dressler Reference Dressler, Sullivan, Yelle and Taussig-Rubbo2011). A central feature of Islam, Sufism and Alevism in Turkey, love (aşk), thus becomes the element that renders Sufism acute, threatening, and visible, functioning as a catalyst for abnormal sexual behavior.

The idea for this dossier emerged during our two-day workshop entitled “Religion and its History in Turkey: New Approaches, Alternative Perspectives,” co-organized by Markus Dressler and Gökçen B. Dinç and held at Leipzig University, Institute for the Study of Religions, on January 27–28, 2023. The workshop was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and co-sponsored by the Centre for Advanced Studies “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” at Leipzig University and the Nonreligion in a Complex Future Project. Our primary aim was to revisit the experience of Turkish modernity on the centenary of the Republic by reflecting on the plurality of forms of religiosity and the complexity of religious life in Turkey. We would like to thank Professor Dressler, our sponsors, the participants of the workshop for the fruitful discussions, and our authors, who made this dossier possible. I would also like to thank Mark Soileau for co-editing the articles.

Taken together, the contributions illuminate how Islamic life in modern Turkey has been shaped not only through state policy and institutional reform, but also through vernacular media, embodied ritual, professional trajectories, and secular scientific discourse, revealing Islam as a plural and historically contingent field constituted through ongoing processes of mediation, negotiation, and reinterpretation. Despite Smith’s early recognition cited at the outset, the historical complexity of Islamic life in modern Turkey has remained insufficiently explored. We hope that this dossier opens new lines of inquiry beyond “orthodox” Islam and brings the history of Islam in Turkey into closer dialogue with critical scholarship on Islam in the twenty-first century.