Theocracy, Secularism, and Islam in Turkey / Contemporary Anthropology of Religion (PDF)

Despite being only 30,000 words, this is the most original and groundbreaking work I have read on Turkey in a decade. It sidesteps the endless polarizations and repetitions that characterize analysis of Turkey's politics by providing a fresh way of understanding the foundational features of the Kemalist revolution that have endured over the course of the Republic. It also introduces and defines a new term that appears to have real analytic power in understanding non-theocratic politics in many places around the world. On top of this it is beautifully written and very, very clear.

-Kenan Çayir, Director, Center for Sociology and Education Studies, Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey, and Professor in the Department of Sociology, Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey

In this novel and lucid work, Christopher Houston clarifies a particular modern style and practice of politics that he calls anthropocracy. In the name of popular sovereignty, anthropocracies de-legitimize the rule of God(s) even as they re-deploy it to stabilize the rule of the representatives of the people, all the while obfuscating their political conscription of the divine.

In distinguishing anthropocracy from varieties of other secular and laicist political arrangements, as well as from theocracy, this book also gives readers a brilliant solution to what it calls the Turkish puzzle, the dilemma over how to best describe and analyze state-religion and state-society relations in the Turkish Republic. This work convincingly undermines two orthodox presumptions about Turkish politics: the claim that Turkish modernity should be considered an example of secularity; and the accusation that the current AKP government should be interpreted as Islamic. On the contrary, it argues that both Kemalism and the AKP continue to institute an anthropocratic Republic

Christopher Houston is Discipline Chair of Anthropology at Macquarie University, Sydney. He has carried out extensive fieldwork in Turkey on Islamic social movements, nationalism, urban processes in Istanbul, and on the Kurdish issue. His most recent book is titled Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup d'état, and Memory in Turkey (California University Press, 2020). He was President of the Australian Anthropological Society in 2014/2015.