Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

6-2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Anthropology

Advisor

Omri Elisha

Committee Members

Murphy Halliburton

Christa Salamandra

Susannah Crockford

Subject Categories

Anthropology | Social and Cultural Anthropology

Keywords

New Age Spirituality, religion, secularism, Turkey

Abstract

The conflict between religion and secularism has been one of the major forces shaping Turkey’s socio-political landscape since the late nineteenth century. With the radical secular turn during the founding of the Turkish Republic, secularism remained the dominant force until the rise of political Islam in the 1980s. This dissertation, grounded in ethnographic fieldwork, argues that New Age spirituality, adopted by the secular upper-middle class, has become an alternative venue for the reproduction of secular sensibilities and socio-economic privilege in contemporary Turkey, at a time when the two-decade tenure of the Erdoğan regime has undermined secular hegemony.

Although New Age spirituality seems to be at odds with secular ideology, Turkish New Age communities continue to support secularism by criticizing what they perceive as traditional Islam and the Erdoğan government. They express a longing for a secular past in which secularism was the dominant force shaping politics and everyday life, both in their personal elaborations on spirituality and group gatherings. These spiritualized perspectives extend to different forms of individual suffering or collective events. My interlocutors interpret the 2023 earthquake and the ongoing economic crisis, as well as rape and misogyny, through concepts such as karma and personal responsibility, which reflect the ways in which neoliberal ideology is infused into spiritual discourse. The dissertation offers novel perspectives on the interplay between secularism and Islam, secular nostalgia within spiritual narratives, and the relationship between spiritual discourse and neoliberal ideology.

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