Minorities in Turkey II: Ideology and Discrimination

This article focuses on the ideological roots of the repressive and discriminatory mentality/philosophy that has shaped democracy and minority policies in Turkey. My aim is to analyze the consequences of this mentality, with an emphasis on hate speech and discrimination. To this end, I summarize the consequences of the issues and policies discussed in the previous article, and discuss their future implications for both the state and the people of Turkey. I conclude that it is necessary to refer to citizens not through the ethno-religious term Turk, and still less as Muslims, but through the thoroughly territorial term Türkiyeli (of Turkey), and to do all that is necessary to ensure such a transformation in mentality.

Minorities in Turkey I: Law and Reform

Here I uncover the relationship between the term “Turk” (an ethno-religious term that, in some usages covertly, in some overtly, avers that Turkey is the land of ethnic Turks, and that only Muslims are considered Turk), and the concepts of race and religion. A critical period for the advancement of human rights and minority rights in Turkey occurred in the early 2000s, when the parliament adopted a series of reform packages in order to harmonize the country’s laws with those of the European Union (EU). I propose to examine a case of these most radical democratic reforms carried out since the establishment of the republic, in order to understand how these reforms have been put into practice. I also trace the deviation from these reforms after 2005, by examining the subsequent laws and practices that undo or undermine them, and discuss their implications, particularly for Kurds in case of the deterioration under the state of emergency (Olağanüstü Hal, or OHAL), declared in response to the July 15, 2016 coup attempt.

“He named you Muslims before and in this”: some considerations about the lexemes islām and muslim in the Qur’an

The study identifi es the semantics of the words islām and muslim in the Qur’an on the basis of contextual and diachronic analysis. During the research there were defi ned 8 thematic groups of uses, only 5 of which can in one way or another be attributed to the period of Muhammad prophecy. At the same time, considering the only exception in 72 cases of usage, all the lexemes are used as a technical religious term in all the abovementioned thematic groups. The periodization of surahs studies demonstrated the absence of semantic evolution, the assumption of which was made by some European authors. Profound analysis of lexical antitheses of this term has revealed the fact that it is opposed not only to unbelief and deviation from God’s way, but also to faith as an internal belief, thus representing an external act of accepting religion and observing its institutions. In conclusion, the author proposes a new version of the lexemes translation within the Qur’an, where he refl ects their religious, general monotheistic and performative meanings.

Practical Esotericism and Tikkun Olam: two modern renditions of a medieval mystical idea

In this paper I look at a specific Hebrew religious term, Tikkun Olam, to examine the manner in which it signifies differently in two specific cases. While we understand that meaning is carried in both denotation and connotation, and while a genealogy of meaning is often useful to understand the manner in which meaning has changed across time, this paper recounts the manner in which a single word may signify differently synchronically, at a single point in history.

Biology teachers’ conceptions of Humankind Origin across secular and religious countries: an international comparison

Striving toward a better understanding of how the global spread of creationist ideology may impact biology teachers and teaching worldwide, this study comparatively examines how biology teachers from three Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay) conceive the origin of humankind. It is reported that teachers from Uruguay (the most secular country) and Argentina (a country with intermediate religiosity) more frequently associated humankind origin with scientific terms Evolution, Natural selection, and Australopithecus. In contrast, Brazilian teachers stood out as those most frequently associating humankind’s origin to the religious term “God” alongside scientific terms. This study underscores the importance of the interplay of social factors (societal religiosity) and psychological factors (e.g., personal commitment) when considering the impact of teacher exposure to creationist ideology. It also highlights the need for biology teachers (particularly those in more religious countries) to undergo professional development.

Funerals, Faces, and Hellenistic Philosophers

In this chapter two phases of the origins and development of the concept of person in ancient Rome are discussed. In a prephilosophical phase, the origins of the word can be traced back to the Etruscans and the Greeks, respectively. The Latin word persona is most likely of Etruscan origin. At first the Romans used this word as a religious term. At the end of the second century BCE it came to be applied in the context of the Greek theatre, too. Panaetius, in his “Romanized” version of Stoicism, as preserved and developed by Cicero, reinterpreted the Greek and Etruscan understanding of person in the sense of the general and particular roles that human beings take on in life. Seneca, but more especially Epictetus and Boethius, developed these interpretations further, each with a different emphasis: Epictetus discussed person from an internal point of view, whereas Boethius formulated his influential definition of person in the debate on the nature of Christ.

Old Customs

Although they highlight the Norse (religious) term siðr ‘custom’ and its cognates, some researchers of pre-Christian Scandinavia suggest that the concept of religion involves a Christocentric discourse and should be used cautiously, or even only for Christianity. Some scholars therefore recommend a categorical distinction between pre-Christian (religious) siðr and Christian religion. This paper contributes to this ongoing discussion. I argue that while it is meaningful to highlight the term siðr and its cognates, the distinction between pre-Christian siðr and medieval Christian religion is problematic. 1) While siðr had various meanings in vernacular language, the current debate emphasises only its religious aspect, thus turning the indigenous term into an implicit etic concept. 2) The word siðr and its cognates were also used in medieval Scandinavian languages as designations for Christianity, and hence, the categorisation of pre-Christian siðr and medieval Christian religion is misleading. 3) The distinction between popular siðr and formal religion is fundamentally based on the two-tier model of popular/folk religion–religion. 4) The vernacular (religious) word siðr in the sense of ‘religious customs, the religious aspects of the conventional way of life’ and the heuristic category of (lived) religion are in fact complementary in the study of religion in both Viking and medieval Scandinavia.

Salvation

For there to be such a thing as salvation, there must be someone to be saved, something from which they need to be saved, and some way in which they can be saved from it. ‘Salvation’ is primarily a religious term, and religious traditions typically assume that there is some basic religious problem that all people face. Monotheistic religions (for example, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Viśiṣṭādvaita and Dvaita Hinduism) whose central doctrine concerns God conceived as Creator and Providence take this basic problem to lie in the fact of sin. Human persons have sinned (knowingly acted against the will of God) and sinning has become habitual. Thus there is need for forgiveness and reformation, which are available only in God’s gracious pardon and restorative power. People can receive forgiveness and reformation through repentance and faith. Salvation by sheer self-effort is impossible. Nonmonotheistic traditions (for example, Buddhism, Jainism, Advaita Vedānta Hinduism) take a particular sort of ignorance to be the basic problem. The ignorance in question involves having false beliefs about the nature of persons and their cosmic environment. The proper treatment and cure is the achievement of an esoteric religious experience in which calm and bliss are accompanied by an understanding of the true nature of reality. The different traditions give very different accounts of what this nature is. Thus religious traditions differ greatly in the ways in which they conceive persons, their basic religious problem, and the proper treatment and cure. Secular notions of salvation, as in classical Marxism, tend to be secularizations of one or another religious conception – in the Marxist case, of the notion of the Kingdom of God.

The Biblical Root ’mn: Retrieval of a Term and Its Household Context

This chapter describes the maternal figure's connection to the etymological development of a key religious term, the Hebrew root 'mn, which is commonly translated as 'faithfulness' or 'constancy'. It talks about the abstract meanings of faithfulness and constancy as outgrowths of concrete maternal associations and provision of an infant's physical needs. The chapter recovers cultural traces of the maternal activities involved in childrearing in biblical terminology and traces maternal disappearance through the ways in which the meanings 'to rear, nurse' become muted abstractions. The chapter emphasizes how culture is embedded within language and how the physical activities of childrearing had a linguistic impact on the elite literature of ancient Israel. It then examines the subjectivity of mothers over their bodies and their own physical experiences as mothers.