The studies on the relation between religion and politics in Turkey have generally evaluated political Islam as a mass movement from below against the authoritarian tendencies of the secular state. This kind of analysis, which is based on a dichotomization between state and society, has tended to read Turkish history as a struggle between secular sensitiveness of Kemalist state elites and religious values of traditional Muslim society. In this regard, the agents of political Islam have been perceived as the carriers of democracy against the assertive secularism of the Kemalist regime. However, the problematic relation of Islamist organizations with democracy and the Islamization of society from above under the government of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) brings into question the one-dimensional arguments of master narrative on secularism in Turkey.

Challenging the above-mentioned master narrative, Ceren Lord’s comprehensive study, Religious Politics in Turkey: From the Birth of the Republic to the AKP, has the potential to give a new impulse to the literature on the relation between religion and politics in the Turkish context. Lord clearly states that the book does not evaluate the rise of religious politics in Turkey as a break in secular nation state building; rather it situates political Islam in the dynamic struggle within the state dating back to the formation of the Republic (p. xiv). The useful concept of religious majoritarianism and Lord’s historical institutionalist methodology, evaluating the state as a social relation determined by struggle among various actors such as the officials of Directorate of Religious Affairs, Muslim bourgeoisie, and secular bureaucracy, relieve her analysis from the simple binary opposition between secular Kemalist state and traditional Muslim society by offering a dynamic multidimensionality.

Religious majoritarianism appears as one of the key concepts of Religious Politics in Turkey. It refers to a political structure in which a numerically majoritarian religious group establishes a monopoly over political and economic resources. The degree of the religious majoritarianism of a country is determined by two factors: (1) the definition of majority–minority relations through religious lines during the nation state formation process, and (2) the reflection of this religious relation in state institutions. In this regard, Turkey appears as a religiously majoritarian country in which the Sunni Muslim majority has control over the political and social capital. Lord traces the rise of religious politics in Turkey through the path-dependent process of religious majoritarianism that has developed through the formation of the nation state.

Lord underlines the continuity between the late Ottoman and early Republican periods, pointing to the Sunni ulema’s integration within state bureaucracy through the Directorate of Religious Affairs, the privileging of Muslim bourgeoisie, and the definition of Turkey’s minority regime on the basis of religion under the influence of the Ottoman millet system. The elements of such continuity expanded the role of religious social boundaries for the national identity and paved the way for the constitution of religious majoritarianism in the Turkish Republic (pp. 37–8). Therefore, despite its secular designation, the Turkish nation state-building project has been intrinsically and significantly religious majoritarian in nature.

Thus, Religious Politics in Turkey assesses Islamist mobilization as the product of a dynamic struggle between the secular institutional establishment, demographically dominant Sunni Muslim population, and Ottoman ulema, which was transformed yet survived under the directorate. The terms of this struggle have been shaped by path-dependent processes occurring within the religious majoritarian nature of nation-state building. The Sunni Muslim community became privileged in the secular establishment of Turkey; however, the balance of power in the early Republican period prevented the political influence of Sunni Muslim politics. What tipped the balance of power on behalf of religious politics was Cold War anti-communism and neoliberalism. As a consequence of the expansion of religious education as a tool of anti-communist struggle, the Islamist actors were able to utilize state-administered religious education to generate and reproduce an Islamist generation. Likewise, the neoliberal restructuring of the Turkish economy in the 1980s opened up new opportunities for Islamist mobilization. A new kind of Islamist bourgeoise and Islamic finance grew within the conditions of the neoliberal economy. Moreover, Islamic charities, which partially took on the role of welfare provision, provided a foundation for the Islamist movement. Chapter 4 of the book examines the expansion of the religious field in the multiparty era in detail.

Lord’s revisionist approach to state–religion relations in Turkey derives from her historical institutionalist methodology. Differently from the mainstream literature, which evaluates the state as a secular and monolithic actor under the influence of Kemalist ideology, she considers the state as a social relation being determined by society through struggles among various official and informal institutional actors. Lord’s emphasis on the role of the Directorate of Religious Affairs as an independent agency for religious politics in Turkey directly represents her historical institutionalist approach, which claims that institutions not only determine the actions of agencies but that they are also shaped by and through political struggles. Due to the fact that the directorate’s power expanded in parallel with the increasing role of religion in politics, the directorate played a vital role in the Islamization of public and private spaces. Chapter 2 indicates that the important role of the Directorate of Religious Affairs for religious politics demonstrates that Islamic movements have been facilitated not just from the bottom up but also from within the state owing to institutions established during the early Republican era. Chapter 3 of the book elaborates on the crucial role of the directorate for the formation of religious majoritarianism of Turkey within the framework of its interventions against the Alevis, who appear as the unnamed minorities of Turkey’s religious majoritarian political atmosphere.

After examining the religious majoritarian political establishment of Turkish nation state building within the framework of the dynamic relationship between state and society, Lord scrutinizes the emergence of the AKP in the last two chapters. Differently from the master narrative that evaluates the power of the AKP as a break in the authoritarian secular pattern of nation state building, Lord situates the rise of the AKP in the context of the path dependency of the religious majoritarianism of nation state building, which has privileged the Sunni Muslim population as the basis of the nation state and owners of its material and institutional sources. Thus, the AKP is assessed as the product of the religiously majoritarian characteristics of the Turkish nation state-building process. Then, owing to its electoral success, the AKP has expanded its power over time and come to monopolize the institutions of the state.

Although Lord considers the role of international factors, such as the Cold War, for the expansion of religious politics in Turkey, she focuses on domestic politics while evaluating the emergence of the AKP. Therefore the study pays little attention to the role of international factors, such as the 9/11 and the Arab Spring, in the rise of the political Islam under the government of the AKP. Still, despite the lack of a global perspective Ceren Lord’s study goes beyond the false dichotomy between state and society and establishes a mutual relation between these two analytic units. It clearly demonstrates how the Islamic movement has strengthened not only from above as a mass movement but also from the bottom up through religiously conservative official institutions. Besides, although the study does not directly discuss it, it implies that secular sensitiveness is not peculiar to the state elites, but has a mass base within society. Owing to the deconstruction of the binary opposition between the laic center and conservative periphery, Religious Politics in Turkey enables the reader not only to overcome the superficial struggle between authoritarian laicism deriving from state elites and conservative sensitiveness stemming from society, but also to provide a multidimensional framework to comprehend state–religion relations in Turkey.