The Islamic Intellectual Field and Political Theorizing in Turkey: Toward an Anthropology of Political Thought

The main aim of IslamPolTheory is to provide training-through-research toward the examination of the intellectual foundations of Islam-based political ideologies and movements that have become one of the main elements of politics throughout Europe and the world in the last two decades, by conducting an interdisciplinary study of the Islamic intellectual field in Turkey, through an examination of 20 leading non-academic periodicals specializing in political thought published since the 1990s.

This field is a unique, rigorous, diverse field of political theorizing that brings together Turkish, Islamic and Western intellectual traditions, and themes ranging from politics and economics to philosophy. Based on conceptual and methodological training under the supervision Prof Thomas B.

Hansen at Stanford University, this study will define and develop the anthropology of political thought as a new field of inquiry that not only applies to Turkey, but also to different countries where an intellectual field can be studied as a site of political theorizing in relation to its social, political and global context.

This study will focus on the Islamic intellectual field in Turkey to locate different schools of thought established around periodicals along the Islamist-conservative divide through ethnographies of ideas and intellectuals.

IslamPolTheory is designed as a career development project that will enable Dr. Çınar to make significant academic and policy-related contributions by launching a new subdiscipline and helping expand public awareness by bringing into light novel information on Islam-based political movements, identities and ideologies in Europe and the world.

The new conceptual and methodological skills, knowledge and networks acquired at Stanford will be brought back, utilized and disseminated among multidisciplinary, transnational and multisectoral audiences in Turkey and Europe in consultation with beneficiary supervisor, Dr Ilker Ayturk at Bilkent University.