13 - The Use of Friday Sermons in Creating Erdoğanism’s Tolerated Citizens

Summary

This chapter analyses the Diyanet’s Friday sermons delivered in the last two decades between January 2001 and July 2020. Attending Friday prayers is obligatory for Muslim adult males and, according to surveys, about 60 per cent of males attend Friday prayers. The state has always seen this as an adult education and indoctrination tool to propagate its religious doxa, the Diyanet Islam. To trace the change in the content and perspective of the sermons from pre-AKP times to the AKP 3.0 period, and also to investigate the worldview that is disseminated through these sermons, I have looked at topics and themes on ‘Love of Homeland’, ‘Turkish Nationalism, National Unity and Solidarity’, ‘Reconstructing History: From Nationalism to Islamist Populism’, ‘Disappearance of Atatürk’s Personality Cult’, ‘Conspiracies, Victimhood, and the Crusader West’, ‘Militarism and Sacrificing Life for Allah, Islam and Ummah’, andthe ‘Turkish Army’s Jihad’, Each of these are analysed in a separate section in this chapter. Each section starts with the last decade of Diyanet 1.0 (2001–2010); it then moves on to the Diyanet 2.0 period (2010–2020). The analysis shows that Diyanet Islam has significantly moved towards an Islamist, populist, Ottomanist with a restorative nostalgia and more intense resentment, ummatist, anti-Westernist, jihadist, conspiratorialist, and more militarist direction.