Superstition, Material Religion and Hıdrellez in Turkey

This project will investigate the history of Turkey in terms of religion, rather than Islam, to understand the roots of the normative understanding of religiosity as Sunni-Islamic.

The aim is to comprehend the “Western” influence on religion and Islam in Turkey and to illuminate the history of material forms of religiosity by focusing on Hıdrellez, a religious practice that was, and still is, celebrated in a convivial manner by people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds.

While recent critical approaches in global religious history and material religion aim to overcome any Eurocentrism that still persists in religious studies, the case of Turkey still remains largely unexplored.

Situated at the intersection of religious studies and history, this project will break new ground by bringing together a postcolonial history of “superstition” with the historical analysis of “material religion”, and will advance global debates on how religion is discussed today through its critique of essentialist definitions of Muslim majority nations.

The research objectives are: (1) to examine the role of “superstition” in the categorisation of Islam during the 1950s as a form of global entanglement between Turkey and the “West”, (2) to investigate the research on the history of religions and “superstitions” as a form of entanglement between Turkey and Germany, (3) to empirically analyse the history of the diversity of religious life by focusing on Hıdrellez, (4) to analyse the transformation of Hıdrellez from a religious practice to Intangible Cultural Heritage.

SUPERSTITIOUS will generate international collaborations and foster vibrant cooperation between scientific communities, civil society representatives and citizens.

In the early years of the second centenary of the Republic of Türkiye, it intends to lay the foundations for an awareness of religious pluralism and tolerance among its citizens and diaspora communities.