Türkiye–Istanbul

1. When and how did the Turks accept Islam?

The Turkic peoples of Central Asia, who constitute the roots of present-day Turks of Türkiye, encountered Islam as Arab Muslims advanced into Central Asia. The Battle of Talas in Central Asia in 751 was a battle in which the Turks and the Abbasid forces defeated the Tang army, and it served as an opportunity to expand political and military contact between the Abbasid power and Turkic groups, and in the gradual process of exchange that followed, the Islamization of the Turks was promoted. After this battle, exchanges with the Abbasid Empire expanded, and by the mid-ninth century several Turkic tribal leaders converted to Islam. However, the majority of Turkic tribes that had no direct contact with the Abbasid Empire were still not greatly influenced by Islam.

The turning point for the spread of Islam throughout Turkic nomadic society can be found in the conversion of the Karakhanid (Karahan) dynasty around the tenth century. The Karakhanid dynasty accepted Islam under the influence of the Persian Islamic Samanid dynasty, and this has important significance in that it was the first Islamic dynasty ruled by Turks.

The Samanid dynasty was established in the late ninth century as a Persian noble family that had begun as provincial governors gradually became independent in the process of the weakening of central control along with the territorial expansion of the Abbasid Empire. The Karakhanid dynasty, which bordered the Samanids, adopted from them the Hanafi school of law, whose interpretation of law was relatively flexible. The practically adaptive character of Hanafi jurisprudence corresponded well with Turkic society, which possessed nomadic traditions and a military state structure, and it also coincided with the political necessity of state integration and incorporation into the international order. Thus, in Turkic society Islam began to take root not merely as a system of belief but as a foundation supporting the legitimacy of political and social order.

After the Battle of Dandanqan in 1040, the Seljuk forces weakened the Ghaznavid dynasty and secured political leadership over the regions of Iran and Iraq. The rise of the Seljuk Empire became an occasion for the Islamization of the Turkic forces to expand beyond the elite level to society as a whole, and as a result, by the fourteenth century most of the Turks residing in Central Asia had accepted Islam.

In 1071, by defeating the Byzantine Empire at the Battle of Manzikert, the Seljuk Empire entered Anatolia in earnest, and this became a turning point in which the Turkic forces emerged as a central actor in the Islamic world. At the same time, this battle aroused a structural sense of crisis in the Byzantine Empire and the Western Christian world, and this sense of crisis became one of the backgrounds that later triggered the Crusades.

While the Islamic world experienced prolonged turmoil due to the Crusades and the Mongol invasions, Sufi orders played a role in maintaining and rebuilding Islamic faith centered on local communities. Upon this religious and social foundation, the Ottoman Empire emerged and established a Sunni Islamic empire that inherited the political and religious traditions of the Seljuks. As a result, while the official Islam of the state was based on Sunni Hanafi jurisprudence, a religious structure was formed in which Sufism operated strongly at the social level. These Islamic traditions of the Seljuk and Ottoman emirse were later inherited by the modern Republic of Türkiye, which transitioned into a modern nation-state.

2. What were the religions of the Turks prior to Islam, and how did they influence Islam? What was their relationship with Christianity?

Before the introduction of Islam, the religion of the Turks consisted of shamanism that emphasized practical needs, the worship of the sky god (Tengri belief), and ancestor worship. These religious traditions possessed a character that valued practicality and this-worldliness, and this also influenced the manner in which the Turks later accepted Islam.

Hanafi jurisprudence, which has a strong practically adaptive and pragmatic character, was relatively easier for Turkic society, where shamanistic traditions were strong, to accept compared to other schools of law. The Seljuk Empire, which adopted Hanafi jurisprudence that permits rational judgment and analogy in the interpretation of the Qur’an, displayed a relatively tolerant religious and intellectual attitude compared to Arab states centered on the Shafi‘i school that emphasized scripture and North African states centered on the Maliki school that emphasized customary practice.

In addition to orthodox Sunni Islam, indigenous religious traditions with pantheistic and mystical characteristics combined with Persian Sufism and appeared in the form of heterodox Islam. Although outwardly they took the form of Sufi orders or displayed Shi‘i elements, in substance they were distinctive forms of Islam reflecting the unique religious sensibilities of the Turks. Various religious elements that had existed before the acceptance of Islam were mixed with Islamic concepts, and existing traditional religious rituals continued under the name of Islam. Such traditions were widely accepted among the Turkic peoples, who had strong shamanistic and pragmatic religious tendencies.

Although some Turkic groups accepted Nestorian Christianity, there was no case in which the Turks as a whole collectively adopted Christianity. Rather, the Islamized Seljuk Empire experienced conflict with the Byzantine Christian world. As a result of pressure on the Byzantine Empire in Asia Minor, the Crusades unfolded, but at the time Muslims tended to perceive them not as religious wars but rather as political and military conflicts.

3. What position did Islam take after the World Wars?

In the face of Western growth, the Ottoman Empire promoted Westernization through the Tanzimat (reforms), and the Republic of Türkiye, which succeeded the Ottoman Empire, chose a secular modernist path based on civic Turkish nationalism. Mustafa Kemal, the founder of the Republic of Türkiye, as a thorough modernist abolished the caliphate and outlawed Sufi orders, and by replacing Sharia with a modern civil law system he excluded Islam from the public sphere. Various policies promoted at the time of the establishment of the Republic later became models for modernization in Iran and Afghanistan and were mentioned as a symbolic precedent of secularism in the Islamic world.

Under the strong leadership of Mustafa Kemal, secularization proceeded rapidly, and while the urban upper classes perceived Islam as backward, Sufi traditions and religious faith remained strong in rural areas. Within this social gap, a trend continued among the urban poor to seek alternatives in Islam.

In this context, from the 1970s onward, the Fethullah Gülen movement emerged, inheriting the thought of Said Nursi. This movement, as an Islamic modernist movement seeking to harmonize Islamic faith and reason, presented a moderate model of Islamic revival between extremism and secularism. The current President of Türkiye, Erdoğan, also grew within this intellectual current in his early period but later politically parted ways.

4. What is the most influential Islamic school in Türkiye, who is its central figure, and what is the core of his teaching?

In Türkiye, the most influential school of Islamic law is the Hanafi school, and theologically the Maturidi school occupies a central position. Hanafi jurisprudence developed in eighth-century Kufa in Iraq, and Kufa was a multi-ethnic city in which Arabs, Persians, and non-Arab converts (mawali) were mixed, and where various social problems arose. In such an environment, Hanafi jurisprudence developed a practically adaptive legal interpretation that actively utilized rational judgment and analogy in a situation in which the transmission of hadith had not yet been fully established.

Maturidi theology was systematized in Samarkand in the ninth to tenth centuries, and as a theology that strongly recognized the role of reason, it theoretically supported Hanafi jurisprudence. This tradition became the state ideology of the Ottoman Empire and continues in Islamic theological education in the modern Republic of Türkiye.

Sufism has also played an important role in Turkic society. The eleventh–twelfth century scholar al-Ghazali, while being an orthodox Sunni scholar, integrated Sufism into orthodox Islam, and his thought still occupies an important position in Islamic education in Türkiye today. As a result, Islam in Türkiye came to possess a character that emphasizes the role of reason while also stressing spiritual practice.

Among contemporary Islamic movements in Türkiye, the most influential ideas are those of Said Nursi and the Gülen movement. They developed in a form that combined orthodox Sunni Islam, which emphasizes reason, with Sufi elements. Said Nursi’s major work, Risale-i Nur, presents an interpretation of the Qur’an within the integration of science and faith and aims at the restoration of belief. Gülen, who developed this thought into a social movement, spread Islam through education, economic activity, and interreligious dialogue, and there are three core elements in his interpretation of Islam. The first is the “Islamization of modernity,” which actively accepts reason, secular scholarship, and capitalist economic activity. It is an effort to preserve Islam by renewing it in accordance with modernity. The second is the “Turkification of Islam,” which holds that a tolerant Turkic Islam rooted in Ottoman tradition is suitable for modern society. The third is “activist Islam,” which aims to expand into a global Islamic movement through voluntary and devoted practice.

5. What influence does Islam have on Türkiye, and what is the role of Türkiye in the Islamic world?

The Republic of Türkiye is constitutionally a secular state and guarantees individual freedom of religion. The civic Turkish nationalism promoted by Mustafa Kemal after the establishment of the Republic was a political strategy to prevent fragmentation following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and to form a new national identity. In this process, Islam was institutionally separated from state power, but at the social and cultural level it was managed as a core element of communal integration, and as a result, the social perception that “a Turk is a Muslim” was formed. The historical experience that the Ottoman Empire had inherited the authority of the caliphate for approximately four hundred years since the sixteenth century functioned as a background that led Islam to be perceived after the Republic not as a severed past but as a continuing civilizational heritage.

The Turks grew into a central military force in the medieval Islamic world and played an important role in maintaining the caliphal system. The Seljuk Empire functioned as the political protector of the caliph, and with the Ottoman Empire the title of caliph was officially inherited. This signified a structural shift in which the political center of the Islamic world moved from Arab to non-Arab powers. In this process, Islam was institutionalized as a universal religion encompassing diverse peoples and regions beyond being a religion limited to a particular ethnicity.

From the perspective of religious administration, Turkic Islam adopted Hanafi jurisprudence and Maturidi theology as institutional standards, while spreading faith throughout society through Sufi orders. This combination contributed to establishing Islam as a religious system capable of operating within a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural imperial order, and it played a role in strengthening the popularization and cultural inclusiveness of Islam.

References

Ansary, T. (2011). Destiny disrupted: A history of the world through Islamic eyes (H. Ryu, Trans.). Puriwa Ipari. (Original work published 2009)

Kim, S. W. (2013). Turkey, the brother nation: An exploration of Islam. Geulmadang.