Nationalism and Religious Discourse: Examining The Kurdish-Turkish Conflict

Abstract

The limited study of the intersection of nationalism, religion, and ethnicity deserves deeper study in the literature. Existing studies focus mostly on the boundary-making function of religion – the creation of in-group/out-group distinction as a basis of collective identity formation. However, religion can also be used to merge different identities and make group boundaries “fuzzier” which we refer to as boundary-blurring. To answer the question of why and when sharpening ethnic boundaries is preferred to blurring them, we applied Jared Rubin’s “propagation of rule” framework to modern Turkey. We focused on the Kurdish-Turkish conflict and examined the relationship between the Turkish State and Presidency of Religious Affairs – the biggest religious organization in Turkey. We used Structural Topic Modeling to analyze the religious sermons disseminated in Turkey and found out a positive relationship between the intensity of conflict andthe salience of nationalist rhetoric in religious discourse. Furthermore, we showed that religious rhetoric is used to sharpen boundaries when the economic legitimization capacity of the state is low. Contrary, when there is economic prosperity, religious rhetoric is used to blur boundaries. As the involvement of religion in politics through far-right nationalism increases, the insights derived from the Turkish case become even more relevant to the so-called secular states around the world.