How did Turkish Islamists capture state power in a historically secular and periodically repressive political context? How does culture matter in political mobilization? Chapter 1 attends to these general questions to frame the book and its key issues. The chapter revolves around five themes. The first presents the main argument: that the cultural groundwork Islamists laid through a quiet, gradual, and remarkably robust model of mobilization served as a critical factor in their seizure of state power by the start of the twenty-first century. The next theme explains the book’s conceptual vocabulary, such as culture, cultural groundwork, and dispositional training, as well as the different components of the main argument. The third theme provides an overview of the two-part historical analysis by placing Turkish Islamism within the universe of movements of Sunni revivalist Islam; and by drawing out the similarities and difference between the Turkish movement and regional counterparts. The fourth theme engages in a critical dialogue with existing explanations for the rise of religious politics in Turkey, especially those that trace this rise to the 1980 military coup. The final theme previews the process of field site selection, data collection, data analysis, and, more broadly, the book’s methodological approach.