CAIS Public Lecture Series | Turkey in Transition: Authoritarian Drift, Public Protest, and the Future of Islamism

This timely lecture will examine the political and ideological transformations unfolding in Turkey, with a focus on recent events such as the arrest of the Mayor of Istanbul and the ensuing protests. Are we witnessing the reactivation of civil society and a potential turning point in Turkish politics? What does the public dissent reveal about the changing social base and cultural authority of Erdoğan’s regime? The lecture will also interrogate the evolving character of Turkish Islamism after two decades of AKP rule. What kind of Islam has emerged under Erdoğan? Why does it appear morally thin yet ritualistically rich? To what extent is this transformation a product of state engineering, political exhaustion, or deeper cultural currents? This lecture offers an empirically grounded and theoretically rich overview of Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy shifts, providing critical insight into the nexus of identity, religion, and power in contemporary politics.

Speaker:

M.Hakan Yavuz is a professor of political science at the University of Utah. His current projects focus on transnational Islamic networks in Central Asia and Turkey; the role of Islam in state-building and nationalism; and ethno-religious conflict management. Prof Yavuz has published many books including: Erdoğan: The Making of an Autocrat (Edinburg University Press, 2022); Nostalgia for the Empire: The Politics of Neo-Ottomanism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020); Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2003; 2005)(3rd print). Prof Yavuz has received several fellowships, some of which are the MacArthur Fellowship, University of California Fellowship, and Rockefeller Fellowship, and most recently was a Tanner Humanities Center Fellowin 2014.