The in-betweens: Contesting the Secular and the Religious Hegemonies

Year 2025, Volume: 7 Issue: 1, 1 - 29, 30.04.2025

Büşra Kırkpınar , Nalan Turna

https://doi.org/10.52613/ujhc.1617181

Abstract

This article explores the interplay of religious and secular hegemonies experienced by young secular individuals in contemporary Türkiye. We elucidate this condition as in-betweenness through the resistance to conforming to exclusive or extreme discursive arrangements imposed by religious and secular people. Focusing on the online youth group Gray Zone on X, we draw on Habermas’s postsecularity and adopt Constructivist Grounded Theory to show how this hegemonic dynamic manifests through participants’ reflexive thinking and the reduction of rigid ideologies. Our findings, based on semi-structured interviews, demonstrate that the shift from hegemonic to "in-between" interactions emerges through the everyday articulations of lived social practices that reproduce religious-secular engagements. These articulations show that different hegemonies challenge each other daily, which we call the multiple hegemonies effect. Despite the contradictory practices within secularity itself that create a sense of being in-between, secular participants reinforce their commitment to secularity by continuously redefining its meaning to explain “true” secularity.

Keywords

Hegemony, In-betweenness, Habermas, Postsecularity, Religion, Secularism

Aradakiler: Seküler ve Dini Hegemonyaların Mücadelesi

Abstract

Bu makale, günümüz Türkiye'sinde genç seküler bireylerin deneyimlediği dini ve seküler hegemonyaların karşılıklı etkileşimini incelemektedir. Bu durumu, dindar ve seküler kişiler tarafından dayatılan dışlayıcı veya aşırı söylemsel düzenlemelere uymaya direnme yoluyla arada kalmışlık olarak açıklıyoruz. X'teki çevrimiçi gençlik grubu Gray Zone'a odaklanarak, bu hegemonik dinamiğin katılımcıların refleksif düşünceleri ve katı ideolojilerin indirgenmesi yoluyla nasıl ortaya çıktığını göstermek için Habermas'ın postsekülerlik kavramından faydalanıyor ve Yapılandırmacı Temellendirilmiş Teori'yi benimsiyoruz. Yarı yapılandırılmış görüşmelere dayanan bulgularımız, hegemonik etkileşimlerden “arada” etkileşimlere geçişin, dini-seküler angajmanları yeniden üreten yaşanmış sosyal pratiklerin gündelik eklemlenmeleri yoluyla ortaya çıktığını göstermektedir. Bu eklemlenmeler, farklı hegemonyaların her gün birbirlerine meydan okuduğunu gösteriyor ki biz buna çoklu hegemonyalar etkisi diyoruz. Sekülerliğin kendi içinde bir arada kalmışlık hissi yaratan çelişkili uygulamalara rağmen, seküler katılımcılar “gerçek” sekülerliği açıklamak için sekülerliğin anlamını sürekli olarak yeniden tanımlayarak sekülerliğe olan bağlılıklarını pekiştirmektedir.

Keywords

Aradalık, Din, Habermas, Hegemonya, Postsekülerite, Sekülerizm

References

• Ağcan, M. A. (2020). The postsecular and rethinking the political. Journal of Economy Culture and Society.
• Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Reading/Addison-Wesley.
• Altınordu, A. (2016). The political incorporation of anti-system religious parties: The case of Turkish political Islam (1994–2011). Qualitative Sociology, 39(2), 147–171.
• Altınordu, A. (2021). Is Türkiye a postsecular society? In K. Barkey, S. Kaviraj, & V. Naresh (Eds.), Negotiating democracy and religious pluralism (pp. 157–177). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Bayat, A. (2013). Life as politics: How ordinary people change the Middle East. Stanford University Press.
• Becci, I. (2018). Religious super-diversity and gray zones in public total institutions. Journal of Religion in Europe, 11(2–3), 123–137.
• Bhabha, H. K. (2012). The location of culture. Routledge.
• Brubaker, R., & Cooper, F. (2000). Beyond" identity". Theory and Society, 29(1), 1-47.
• Casanova, J. (1994). Public religions in the modern world. University of Chicago Press.
• Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory (2nd ed.). Sage.
• Çinar, A. (2005). Modernity, Islam, and secularism in Türkiye: Bodies, places, and time (Vol. 14). University of Minnesota Press.
• Foucault, M. (1991). The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality. University of Chicago Press.
• Gri Bölge. (2020, July 9). Gri Bölge'nin amacı ve yaklaşımı hakkında kısa bir açıklama [Tweet]. X. https://x.com/gribolgeorg/status/1281269133032804352
• Gorski, P. S., Kim, D. K., Torpey, J., & VanAntwerpen, J. (Eds.). (2012). The post-secular in question: Religion in contemporary society. New York: NYU Press.
• Gökarıksel, B., & Secor, A. (2015). Post-secular geographies and the problem of pluralism: Religion and everyday life in Istanbul. Political Geography, 46, 21–30.
• Göle, N. (1997). Secularism and Islamism in Türkiye: The making of elites and counter-elites. The Middle East Journal, 46–58.
• Göle, N. (2012). Postsecular Türkiye. New Perspectives Quarterly, 29(1), 7–11.
• Gözaydın, İ. B. (2008). Diyanet and politics. The Muslim World, 98(2–3), 216–227.
• Gramsci, A. (2020). Selections from the prison notebooks. In T. Prentki & S. Preston (Eds.), The applied theatre reader (pp. 141–142). Routledge.
• Habermas, J. (2006). Religion in the public sphere. European Journal of Philosophy, 14(1), 1–25.
• Habermas, J. (2008). Notes on post-secular society. New Perspectives Quarterly, 25, 17–29.
• Habermas, J. (2015). Between facts and norms: Contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy. Wiley-Blackwell.
• Hall, S. (2021). The hard road to renewal: Thatcherism and the crisis of the left. Verso Books.
• Hodkinson, J., & Horstkotte, S. (2020). Introducing the postsecular: From conceptual beginnings to cultural theory. Poetics Today, 41(3), 317–326.
• Kandiyoti, D. (2012). The travails of the secular: Puzzle and paradox in Türkiye. Economy and Society, 41(4), 513–531.
• Kirdiş, E. (2023). Education, media and civil society: The building of an Islamic cultural hegemony in Türkiye. The International Spectator, 58(1), 146–161.
• Konuralp, E. (2020). Limits of post-secularism in Türkiye: Comparing the attitudes of the Justice and Development Party towards the headscarf and Alevi issues. Religion Compass, e12352. https://doi.org/10.1111/rec3.12352
• Laumann, E. O., & Pappi, F. U. (1976). Networks of collective action: A perspective on community influence systems. Academic Press.
• Mahmood, S. (2005). The politics of piety: The Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton University Press.
• Mahmood, S. (2015). Religious difference in a secular age: A minority report. Princeton University Press.
• Molendijk, A. L. (2015). In pursuit of the postsecular. International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, 76(2), 100–115.
• Parmaksız, U. (2016). Making sense of the postsecular. European Journal of Social Theory, 21(1), 98–116.
• Pettigrew, T. F. (1998). Intergroup contact theory. Annual Review of Psychology, 49(1), 65–85.
• Rosati, M. (2012). The Turkish laboratory: Local modernity and the post-secular in Türkiye. In M. Rosati & K. Stoeckl (Eds.), Multiple modernities and postsecular societies (pp. 61–78). Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
• Sivil Sayfalar. (2020, July 24). “Herkesin kendini özgürce ifade edebildiği alanlar yaratmak istiyoruz” [News article]. Sivil Sayfalar.https://www.sivilsayfalar.org/2020/07/24/herkesin-kendini-ozgurce-ifade-edebildigi-alanlar-yaratmak-istiyoruz/
• Smart, A. (2012). Anthropological shades of grey. In I. Pardo & G. B. Prato (Eds.), Norms and illegality (pp. 21–40). Routledge.
• Stoeckl, K. (2011, February). Defining the postsecular. Academy of Sciences in Moscow. Retrieved from https://synergia-isa.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/stoeckl_en.pdf
• Sunstein, C. (2001). Republic. com. Princeton University Press.
• Taylor, C. (2007). A secular age. Harvard University Press.
• Tuğal, C. (2009). Passive revolution: Absorbing the Islamic challenge to capitalism. Stanford University Press.
• White J. (2012). Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks, Princeton University Press, New Jersey.
• Wohlrab-Sahr, M., & Burchardt, M. (2012). Multiple secularities: Toward a cultural sociology of secular modernities. Comparative Sociology, 11(6), 875–909.
• Yavuz, M. H. (2003). Islamic political identity in Türkiye. Oxford University Press.
• Žižek, S. (2019). The sublime object of ideology. Verso Book.
• Zuckerman, P., & Shook, J. R. (Eds.). (2017). The Oxford handbook of secularism. Oxford University Press.