Abstract
The complex environmental, medical, and social issues of our era have reinforced scientists’ role as expert advisors to policymakers, and publics around the world often hear from politicians that policies they implement are based in science. While the intersection of political and scientific authority may strengthen the credibility of such messages, people’s attitudes toward such cases are often mediated by their identities and worldviews. As a key component of the latter for religious people, the ways in which adherence to the authority of religion may influence perceptions of science and science-based policy is an area in which more research is needed, particularly in regions other than the oft-studied US and European contexts. Turkey presents a significant case in this respect, as not only has it been governed for almost twenty-five years by a party often defined as religious-populist, but its state mechanism embodies an agency that propagates official Islamic views on current issues and offers spiritual guidance to Muslims. Our study explores how religious Muslims in Turkey navigate the intersections among science, politics, and religion by focusing on their views on the controversial topics of recent decades: the COVID pandemic and vaccination, climate change, and sex, gender and sexuality. Based on our findings from focus groups with religious Muslims held in six cities across Turkey, we illustrate that religious people’s attitudes draw on highly diverse interpretations of religious, scientific, and political messages, and they consider no institution, including the official religious agency, as necessarily fully credible in such complex issues.
Presenters
Mehmet Alper YalçınkayaAssistant Professor, Sociology, TED University, Turkey Gülşen Seven
Assistant Professor, Political Science and International Relations, TED University, Turkey
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Islam, Science, Politics, Secularization, Turkey
