Expansion of the Diyanet and the Politics of Family in Turkey under AKP Rule

Numerous studies have analyzed Turkey’s Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. This article focuses on the Diyanet’s new role in the politics of the family and argues that this role constitutes the main channel for its institutional expansion. By discussing the female preachers employed to reach more women and the Family Guidance Bureaus established to strengthen the family through religious guidance, the article looks at the ways in which both have expanded Diyanet’s institutional capacity to reshape gender and family relations along state-sanctioned religious lines. It also suggests that desecularization may offer a conceptual framework with which the implications of Diyanet’s expansion through familialist policies can be analyzed.