Takhayyul Seminar “"Under the Banner of Islam: Turks, Kurds, and the Limits of Religious Unity"

In this seminar, Gülay Türkmen from the University of Gottingen’s Institute of Sociology will join us to discuss her upcoming book "Under the Banner of Islam: Turks, Kurds, and the Limits of Religious Unity” vis-a-vis religion and politics of imagination.

Sunni Islam has played an ambivalent role in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict—both as a conflict resolution tool and as a tool of resistance. Under the Banner of Islam uses Turkey as a case study to understand how religious, ethnic, and national identities converge in ethnic conflicts between co-religionists. It asks a question that informs the way we understand religiously homogeneous ethnic conflicts today: Is it possible for religion to act as a resolution tool in these often-violent conflicts? Blending interview data with a detailed historical analysis that goes back as far as the nineteenth century, Under the Banner of Islam searches for answers to this question.

Gülay Türkmen is a political sociologist and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Göttingen’s Institute of Sociology. Her work examines how certain historical, cultural, and political developments inform questions of belonging and identity-formation in multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies. Her research and teaching interests stand at the intersection of politics and religion, as they relate to questions of migration, nationalism, citizenship, and inclusion/exclusion in multicultural contexts

Zoom Link  :  https://ucl.zoom.us/j/97562898640

Meeting ID : 975 6289 8640