ABSTRACT Political campaigns build a bridge between candidates and voters by providing information and persuasion. . Mobilizing strategies rely on a certain repertoire, focusing on salient issues that candidates believe will make them appear more confident. However, the nature of political contests does not allow candidates to ignore their rivals’ appeals; instead, they respond in ways that lead them to adopt similar frames, generating issue convergence. This article aims to scrutinize the discursive shift of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who conducted the 2023 presidential campaign under the Nation Alliance. The context-based competition and the condensed electoral schedule in allow us to examine how mainstream opposition blocs can be influenced by more nationalist and extreme narratives. The article argues that the electoral campaign initially framed inclusiveness articulating ″togetherness″ and shared grievances. For the second round, the campaign tone shifted toward a more nativistand exclusiveness, emphasizing issues of anti-migration, criminalization and ″the protection of Turkish women″.

ABSTRACT This study theorizes a digital-religious dialectic in Turkey, showing how social media platforms and populist governance co-shape the remaking of religious belief and identity. Based on semi-structured interviews with Istanbul-based influencers, it examines how they negotiate visibility, self-branding, and audience relationships under political and platform constraints. The article focuses on shifting spiritual practices within the attention economy and analyzes how these dynamics affect piety and political resistance. It further theorizes the digital-religious dialectic as a recursive, two-way process that moves beyond one-way media effects and linear secularization.

ABSTRACT This article presents modernist Islamic interpretations of four Kemalist elites from the Cold War era and argues that their exclusionary attitudes towards certain Islamic groups might have been driven more by their vision of ‘true Islam’ than an utter anti-religious worldview. By contextualizing texts by Bayar, Feyzioğlu, Güventürk and Olcaytu, the article demonstrates that Kemalist elites were not the enemies of Islam as often alleged. The four authors employed specific argumentations that distinguished them from both the conservative critics of Kemalist laicism and the Kemalist proponents of non-religiously-applied laicism.

ABSTRACT This article introduces the Islamic Intellectual Field (IIF) as a heretofore unexplored site of political theorizing that emerged outside academia in the 1940s, evolving into a diverse network of journals and associations. It develops the concept ‘Islamic decoloniality’ to describe movements seeking to replace European epistemic paradigms with Islam-based systems of knowledge. It argues that Islamic decoloniality began in Turkey in the 1940s, producing diverse movements and schools of thought, including AKP’s civilizationist ideology. It further argues that this decolonial discourse runs into a predicament by sustaining the Islam–West binary, which ultimately reproduces the same colonial hierarchies it contests.

ABSTRACT Tanpınar holds a pivotal place in Turkish literature, shaping debates on Turkey's history. This article traces his critical reception from post-Kemalist readings to global interpretations. In the 1980s, he was central to post-Kemalist critiques of modernization; later, his works were reinterpreted through global modernity. Global Tanpınar teaches us two lessons: intellectually, it calls for a post-post-Kemalist perspective that situates Turkey's historical experience within the context of global crises. Culturally, it advocates a policy that goes beyond the traditional East-West synthesis and ‘standard’ multiculturalism by transcending the essentialist dichotomies that underpin global inequalities.

ABSTRACT This special issue explores the contested terrain of youth in twenty-first-century Turkey across education, family, gender, public space, and everyday life. Drawing on recent ethnographic research, the articles examine how youth navigate authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and social conservatism under the AKP regime. Beyond state-centered analyses, this volume highlights everyday negotiations that shape subjectivity, resistance, and belonging. Featuring diverse perspectives – Kurdish youth, young women, religious and secular students, and Syrian migrants – it reveals how young people’s desires create alternative strategies. As Turkey enters a new political moment, this collection offers a crucial lens to understand the shifting, contested dynamics of youth politics today.

ABSTRACT This research aims to reveal the moderating role of the generation gap between gender role attitudes (GRA) and cyber dating abuse (CDA) in Turkey. The study was conducted via a survey of 3607 people. Grounded in Giddens’ theory of structuration, the study reveals how gender-based societal norms and associated behavioral and social factors may increase the risk of CDA, and how gender norms in Turkey comprise an aspect of Turkish social structure. It also indicated a moderating role of the generation gap (Gen X, Y, Z) on the relationship between GRA and CDA, whereas the Baby Boomer generation had no moderating role. Lastly, there is a statistical difference between total gender role attitude, violence perpetration values, and violence victimization values according to daily Internet usage frequency.