OCCUPATION, RELIGION, AND POLITICS: CULTURAL AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION IN MODERN TURKEY

Abstract

This study critically examines the interaction between occupational transformation, religious change, and political realignment in modern Turkey from 1980 to 2026. It argues that Turkey’s cultural and social transformation is often studied through separate disciplinary lenses of occupation, religion, and politics. While these approaches are valuable, treating them in isolation limits our understanding of how modern Turkey’s transformation unfolded. The central thesis of this research is that occupation, religion, and politics complement and mutually reinforce one another in Turkey’s cultural and social transformation. Occupation represents the material dimension of change, religion represents the moral and symbolic dimension, and politics represents the institutional dimension. Methodologically, the thesis adopts a qualitative analytical research design supported by a systematic literature review (SLR) of secondary scholarship. The SLR is used as a transparent source-selection and mapping strategy, guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework. The study analyzes 36 peer-reviewed journal articles selected from Scopus. The selected studies are examined through thematic analysis, supported, where relevant, by contextual empirical evidence on labor force participation, informal employment, gendered employment, and welfare. The findings show that occupational transformation in Turkey was gendered, urbanized, and politically consequential. Religious change marked a remaking of religion through modern institutions, markets, education, welfare networks, gender politics, and state power. Political realignment, especially during the AKP era, organized occupational and religious transformations into durable political identities, welfare relationships, state policies, and polarized blocks. The thesis contributes to debates on modernization, secularization, political Islam, class formation, and Turkish politics by developing an integrated framework in which occupation creates social positions, religion gives them meaning and legitimacy, and politics organizes them into power.

Date of Award	2026
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	HBKU College of Islamic Studies