Modernisation Religion and Politics in Turkey: The Case of İskenderpaşa Community

The most influential of traditional religious brotherhoods is the Naqshbandi community, whose members include many prominent politicians including the late President Turgut Özal, former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, and the current Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan, all of whom belong to the İskenderpaşa community of the Naqshbandi brotherhood in Istanbul. This fact alone is surely sufficient enough to demonstrate the importance of understanding the teachings of that community.

Şahin Alpay
Columnist of Zaman Newspaper


This book analyzes modernisation, religion and politics with special reference to the İskenderpaşa Community, a religious group historically rooted in the Naqshbandi tradition in Turkey. The present study expounds the role of Islam in the process of economic rationalisation, the issue of secularism and democracy in an Islamic culture, and the role of Islam in the political process and nation-building, all in reference to the İskenderpaşa Community. As Demircis discursive analysis of the İskenderpaşa Community between 1980s and 1990s suggests, this Islamic revivalist group has been highly adaptive to the changing circumstances in time and space.